Daily Archives: March 19, 2010

Here Lies Love

I originally mentioned this here about a month or two ago – David Byrne and Fatboy Slim have collaborated on a new project called Here Lies Love. “Songs from Here Lies Love presents Imelda Marcos meditating on events in her life, from her childhood spent in poverty and her rise to power to her ultimate departure from the palace. In particular, the production looks at the relationship between Imelda and a servant from her childhood, Estrella Cumpas, who appeared at key moments in Imelda’s life.”

Rather than choosing singers to play specific roles, each track has a different lead vocalist – including Florence Welch, St. Vincent, Tori Amos, Martha Wainwright, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Kate Pierson, Natalie Merchant, Santigold and “many more.” The complete work was performed live at Carnegie Hall in NYC and at the Adelaide Bank Festival of the Arts just 10 days ago.

Scheduled for release on April 6th, the album leaked to the internet and I’ve been listening to it this afternoon. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this but was hoping that it wouldn’t be another Evita and on first listen, I quite like it (though I confess I haven’t been paying close attention to the lyrics). Musically, the melodies remind me of past Byrne songs, some Latina percussion and other world music accents and it sounds like Fatboy Slim brought some dance beats and production expertise to this. It’s definitely musically strong but of course Imelda remains a controversial figure to this day and I suppose many peoples’ reactions to this project will stem from their feelings about her.

You can view one of the album’s videos over at Boing Boing – “Please Don’t” features vocals by Santigold and the video consists entirely of archival news footage, mostly Imelda meeting with and charming world leaders from Nixon to Mao. (I showed the video to my helper and asked her if she would give it a thumbs up or down and she said she’s “in the middle.”)

The album will be available in several configurations, both atoms and bits. I’m happy enough with what I’m hearing to want the super mega deluxe version that includes 2 CDs, a DVD of the six videos and a 120 page hardcover book. View the order page on David Byrne’s web site here. (You can also stream 30 second excerpts of all the songs there.)

Sad News Indeed

Very sad to read yesterday that seminal rocker Alex Chilton died at the age of 59, most likely from a heart attack. I didn’t know that Chilton was only 16 when The Boxtops’ “The Letter” became a global hit. Of course, it’s his work with Big Star and as a solo independent artist that are at the core of his legacy. Rhino released a fabulous Big Star boxed set last year, a 4 disc set called Keep An Eye on the Sky that really does justice to that influential band. There’s no current collection of his solo stuff – the Rhino release came out in 1991 and I see a 2 disc set on an indie label released in 1997 called Top 30 that I’ll have to try to find (curiously, the CDs cost $17.49 on Amazon, $15.98 as a download on Amazon but $24.99 as a download on iTunes).

British DJ Charlie Gillett died yesterday as well, age 68. I’ve never heard him on the radio but I’ve been a fan ever since reading his 1970 book, The Sound of The City: The Rise of Rock & Roll. If memory serves, it was the first serious look at the history of rock music up to that point and remains an important book to this day because Gillett really dug into the history of the various genres that fed into rock and how it all came together. Since then, a lot of other books have covered similar ground but I don’t think anyone’s improved on this. As a DJ, Gillett gets credit for being one of those who helped bring Dire Straits and Ian Dury to the public’s attention and for helping to popularize world music in the UK.

Caught in the Crossfire

This is not good news for people who read eBooks. The New York Times reports today that Amazon has sent a detailed list of demands to publishers who want Amazon to continue selling electronic versions of their books. These include locking the publishers into restrictive three year contracts. A couple of months ago, when Amazon was in a dispute with publisher Macmillan, they temporarily removed “buy” buttons from all the Macmillan books on their web site.

While Amazon today has 90% of the eBook market in the US, they are clearly anticipating heavy competition from Apple’s iPad, which will hit stores in 15 days. Apple has signed deals with 5 of the 6 major American publishing houses to sell eBooks in their new iBookstore. Apple’s contract, interestingly enough, states that publishers cannot allow any other retailer to sell eBooks at a lower price than the price on Apple’s store. I wonder if this is even legal?

Far from pushing prices down, prices for eBooks are rising. Most best-sellers will now cost $12.99 or $14.99 rather than the $9.99 price that Amazon was trying to standardize.

In the battle between Amazon and Apple, the first loser will be the consumer.

New Lens (and Some Test Shots)

Several meetings in Central and points further west this afternoon. Here’s a close-up of an ad in a realtor’s office in Central, advertising a building with flats with lots of room for your berd.

This beautiful old sign can be found on Des Voeux Road West. I get the feeling that a walk around this area on a sunny afternoon would yield lots of similar gems.

With all of my DX lenses sold off earlier in the week and all of my meetings for the day finished, it was time for me to get the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Nikon HK says the retail price is HK$15,750. YG Billy says the current best price is $13,500 at Citicall in Mong Kok. There’s a Citicall in Central, so I stopped there first, but they quoted me a price of $14,000 so no deal. One of the shops on Stanley Street (where I’ve bought stuff before) told me $13,700 and I figured $200 was worth not having to make a separate trip to Mong Kok on a different day and so I grabbed it.

Of course I had to take some test shots right away. As it happens, my first shots were of people lined up to get some free crap from the Citibank Tiger.

And then I found this nice dragon boat display.

I have some clear shots of this with no people in front but there is something about the blurred runner in this shot that I like. Anyway, here’s a couple of “clean shots.”

Spin around and the wide angle lens allows me to easily capture all these Hong Kong icons in a single shot.

I have to say, the Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 is legendary (for want of a better word) for its sharpness and as I zoomed in on the full-sized RAW photo of the above, I was blown away by that sharpness and detail. This is one amazing hunk of glass! Here’s what I mean, this is cropped from the above photo:

And now, for those of you who like the fish-eye effect, check this out:

Yeah, Cheung Kong Centre on the far left, the old Bank of China Building, HSBC’s HQ, yadda yadda yadda, all the way around to the AIG Tower.

Last test shot for tonight. Some nights it can be quite bright out here, if there are fishing boats on the water with their lights on and especially when there’s a full moon. Tonight, there’s neither of those, this is all that’s out there for me to get – 3:45 AM, looking down on Tai Mong Tsai Road, ISO 6400, f/2.8, 1/30th of a second, hand held: