First listens
Posted by SpikeNov 24
If I haven’t been posting too much about music lately, that’s because I haven’t been listening to much. Listening to music has rarely been a background activity for me; I prefer to play new stuff when I can actually listen to it.
But to make my gf happy, I put on the new Adam Lambert album, For Your Entertainment, in the car yesterday.
And to be honest, by half-way through the third song, I’d had enough. “I’m not enjoying this, are you?” I asked. She said no and I quickly switched to something else. He’s chosen songs that allow him to use the full range of his voice in a Freddie Mercury-like way. All accompanied by lots of heavy synths that I guess are meant to sound modern but sounded annoyingly 80s-retro to me. And three songs in, I was still waiting for a song with a hook that I might want to hear again. Didn’t happen, not even on the probably remix-friendly single.
Then went onto Norah Jones’s latest, The Fall.
This sounded a whole lot better. Working with producer Jacquire King, who has worked with Tom Waits and Kings of Leon, plus musicians like Marc Ribot, it sounds like a serious attempt to update her sound without alienating her fan base too much. On first listen, it worked okay for me.
(Do you find the Amazon frames above to be too blatant, too commercial? Would you prefer simple text links or can you live with it like this? Please let me know.)
Hi, I’m Spike. Born and bred in The Bronx but I've been calling Hong Kong home since 1995. I'm a corporate IT professional, music and film critic and aspiring photo-journalist. I've been writing Hongkie Town since 2004 and have been writing the "Spike" column in BC Magazine since 2006. You can follow me on Twitter




5 comments
Comment by Adam's Pants on November 24, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Sellout!
Nah just kidding.
The Amazon boxes would probably look less intrusive if they were right-aligned with the text though. Ideally with no black border and a background colour to match the page, but I’m not sure if Amazon allow you to customise that or not.
Like this latest page template by the way. Wasn’t too keen on the previous two versions, but this one feels more suitable.
Comment by Spike on November 24, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Amazon allows you choice of colors for text and background and then border/no border. I think your suggestions are very good and will try to incorporate going forward. But these links are a pain in the rear to generate and if no one bothers to click on ‘em, I won’t be doing ‘em for long.
Comment by Jim on November 24, 2009 at 4:10 pm
The music is easy enough to find if you want to. The artist name & title is sufficient.
Comment by Dan on November 24, 2009 at 5:22 pm
What Amazon boxes? I’m using firefox with adblock!
Comment by Spike on November 24, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I certainly understand that, Jim. It’s my perhaps futile hope that people who read the blog and are interested in buying the stuff I write about will click on the links provided so that I can earn a few cents here and there.