Did somebody say Rock Band launch at midnight? While I was luke warm on Amazon Kindle, I’m boiling hot on Rock Band. And so apparently are others in our area.

Tonight Rock Band for the Xbox 360 sold out within minutes while there were still Special Edition versions of the PS3 Rock Band to go around with no crowd. A definite benefit to PS3 owners. Despite the title, tomorrow I’ll be cracking the box seal and testing my drum skills. We might hit the local Fred Meyer when they open at 7am and Best Buy which opens later to see if we can get the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band.

Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 was available tonight as well as the Wii Zapper (only one of them sold at Wal-mart, plenty left). Another gun game, Time Crisis 4 looks hot for the PS3. Didn’t see High Velocity Bowling for the PS3, but that’s another title I’ve been looking forward to playing.

Going to be tough getting any work done this week. What games are you looking forward to this holiday season?

It’s rare seeing Mike Masnick from Techdirt write more than a paragraph or two covering a story — except when it comes to the subject of music copyright and DRM. Masnick’s post this morning challenges the statements made by Kiss rocker Gene Simmons on the theft of music.

Every aspect of the music business other than putting out CDs has been doing better. There are more bands making more music. There are more concerts and bands are making more money than ever before from touring. Tools for making recordings are selling better than ever before. Musical instrument sales are going up as well. More people are making money from music today than ever before. So it’s hard to take Simmons’ comments on the matter at face value. In fact some would argue that the whole reason that the recording industry is suffering is because they tried to follow Simmons’ idea of suing these kids. The interviewer tries to point out the Radiohead and Trent Reznor examples as to why he might be wrong, and he brushes it off.

I’m somewhere between Masnick’s opinion that music should be free and promote other things for artists and Gene Simmon’s radical view that more kids should have been “sued off the face of the earth.” As someone who has written a few dozen songs and was in a band in high school, I understand the hard work that goes into writing music. I don’t know what it’s like to write music that is successful, but one can look around and figure that out easily.

Being an artist is more fruitless than fruitful when it comes to success. All you have to do is visit indie music sites and see how much talent is out there that isn’t “making it” and be reminded that if they make all their music free to promote … what? Their next dive club or bar appearance? Their MySpace page?

I do see value in the songs and while I think a few songs given away or web events like Daryl Hall released last night and mentioned earlier this week can help raise awareness. If you like Hall & Oates music or Hall’s solo stuff, go listen to that, the quality is impressive.

But if you aren’t out touring, then what is the content to drive sales to? T-shirts? Coffee mugs? Pictures? The music is what most people are most interested in, maybe not fans and stalkers, but casual fans like me are going to respond with our wallets to the music.

But I don’t want to see anybody, especially kids, that aren’t reselling or profiting from the music they downloaded being sued. Bringing in the lawyers is a tricky thing when we’re talking about personal use. Come on, college kids downloading and trading music is hurting Kiss music sales how, Gene? Yeah, once they are hooked on “Detroit Rock City”, you mean to tell me they won’t go out and buy that somewhere? Ever?

We buy music and support artists. I encourage others to do the same. The music of these artists has made life more enjoyable and entertaining, they deserve to get paid something. The greedy record execs who have been sucking the life and profits out of musicians can disappear tomorrow. Good riddance.

Remember Hall & Oates? A variation on the “Kiss is on My list” lyrics represent the badly hacked title.

Hall & Oates sold over 60 million albums and Daryl Hall loves the internet. He was on the Howard Stern show this morning promoting his free webcast Live From Daryl’s House with performances of him with his friends in his living room, “an intimate setting.”

Daryl’s website describes the event as:

“This is straight from me to the audience. It gives me the freedom to allow a glimpse into my creative process and work with different musicians. And I feel more comfortable doing it this way. The Internet is a refreshing opportunity to reach people.”

Now this is the kind of refreshing artist view that the RIAA would be wise to understand and embrace. Assuming it’s not too late, which I think it is. The artists can come directly to their fans.

Daryl Hall is divorced from the Sara in the song “Sara Smile” but played a nice acoustic version of the song with T-Bone on guitar during the Stern show this morning. It sounds like this webcast could be a free every month downloadable deal and available via Bubbleup.net service.

These webcasts won’t be streamed live, which would be taking it even a step further, but hey, I’m suddenly more interested in Daryl Hall than I’ve been since the 80s. I might even go out and buy a Hall & Oates CD or two, imagine that?

You can show support for what Daryl is doing starting at 8pm EST tomorrow, November 15.

Just got back from the store and picked up Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. $43.79 at Costco, not too bad.

I remember fondly how Nintendo used to come out with a new Mario game with each new system launch. That pattern went away, but who doesn’t love these Mario games? I’m looking forward to breaking open the package and getting lost in the gameplay. Some of my favorite gaming memories are with that red hat plumber. Super Mario 3 is my all time favorite Mario game and on my top five videogames ever list.

Also on tomorrow’s to-do list, work (it’s hump day!), reading a new book I also bought tonight on Flash CS3, more work, blogging somewhere between, and in the meantime filling up this shelf with CDs:

We were out of shelf space to keep our CD collection in order. I’ve spent the last few weeks going through our collection and re-ripping to MP3 at 320kbps. We’re up over 4,000 songs and there still is over a rack full of CDs to go through. Some of the CDs, I’m learning are scratched and need to be repaired if possible.

According to iTunes, which is the primary tool being used to archive the collection, we’re up over 30GB. I’m pretty sure we’ll be under the 80GB limit of my wife’s iPod fifth generation. After the CD ripping is done I have to go back and finish inventorying our DVD collection. We need another shelf for those too. I’m still using the handy program Delicious Library on the Mac (review) with the iSight camera to keep our CD, DVD, games and to a lesser extent books in order.

Have you been keeping up with your inventory duties? Remember, if you have a fire or loss, your homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance policy requires an inventory of the items. Might as well be proactive instead of reactive.

Listened to music on the Zune most of today but never did figure out how to get my plays to register on my Zune profile on the official Zune website? Seems from the Zune forums like I’m not alone.

Dinner calls. See you on the other side rested and refueled.

First thing this morning, I upgraded my Zune 1 software to Zune 2. I made sure the Zune 30GB was unplugged from USB before proceeding.

The process was smooth and error-free on Windows Vista. Very different installation experience than what happened with Zune 1 software on Vista. I started by going inside the Zune 1 software and checking for updates. It found the update. I started the installation process and these are the step-by-step screenshots:

Accepting the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). A missed opportunity to provide a common-sense EULA. One of these days companies will provide a quick summary version of an EULA with a link to the detailed legal speak. Most people don’t read EULA in their current form.

I’m still waiting to get into the social aspects of Zune. I mostly used the first Zune to listen to music, not be social. Perhaps with version 2, there will be more social opportunities.

Two of the new things I’m looking forward to include built-in podcasting support and non-DRM MP3 files. The former is a big improvement, previously you needed separate software to have podcasting included. The latter isn’t very clear. I think the albums that are in MP3 format show up with “mp3″ in small text on the album covers, however, I didn’t see any clear way to search for only MP3 albums. I found very few albums with the MP3 text. Disappointing if these aren’t broken out into separate section like iTunes does.

Magic text: successfully installed. Oh yeah. I was given the following two choices at the next screen: go right to my collection or customize settings first. I chose the second one.

I was fairly certain the settings were fine, but wanted to review what Zune 2 was using. The categories broken out are for music, video, pictures and podcasts. Click remove or add. Simple UI. Effective.

Zune is setup to associate MP3 and MP4 files, but not Windows Media files.

Checked by default to enter the customer experience improvement program.

Next the new display interface of your existing music. Gone are the brown frames, although it is templated and can be changed. To change go to SETTINGS->DISPLAY. Settings is located at the top.

The new background is called Phyta which is a darker red with an artistic background. Other options include: Diaphanous (lighter red), Everglade (off green), Meridian (silver), Organica (black and white) and Slate (white to black).

The album covers you have will show up, the others won’t (see above and below).

Zune 2 firmware upgrade
After the roughly 10 minutes to upgrade to the Zune 2 software, I plugged in my Zune 30GB. It jumped into action, installing the driver and then offering the following screens.

I clicked the button and waited. After a couple minutes — no errors — the process was complete.

On the Zune 30GB the words “connected” are smaller. Minor gripe: what’s up with that? My eyesight sucks, make the font larger, not smaller.

Zune podcast area
Podcasters and podcast fans will be happy to see there is an entire section dedicated to podcasts. What isn’t so clear are the podcast RSS feed URLs or the ability to import OPML files with collections of podcasts you’re already subscribed to (tweeted by kosso), making this a one podcast at a time process. Hopefully the Zune team adds OPML support.

Entering a single Podcast RSS feed is straightforward. If you produce a podcast and aren’t listed in the Zune directory (only 1,000 or so are) you can submit your podcast RSS feed.

You might also want to add 1-click podcasting subscription inside Zune to your website/blog. At the top of the Hmmcast category, I’ve added one of these 1-click subscription buttons or you can click this button to subscribe:

Overall, I’m impressed with how smooth the Vista installation process went but this is expected behavior, not a feature. Based on my past Vista experience, I expected problems which is a stain that Zune needs to wipe clean for Vista owners. I didn’t have any problems installing the original Zune software on Windows XP, but some others did. Kludgy software was one of the major complaints the first time around.

I’m disappointed that the new Zune marketplace doesn’t do a better job of separating out the MP3 from the DRM-infested tracks. Please fix this, because it is easier to shop for MP3 at iTunes Plus, AmazonMP3 and Wal-mart MP3.

The podcasting support is good to see, but admittedly it should have been included the first time around. On the Zune 30GB player side, the interface doesn’t seem that different, except for the big text options at the starting menu: music, videos, pictures, radio and podcasts. Here’s what it looks like:

After subscribing to the Hmmcast in the Zune software it didn’t automatically sync to the Zune 30GB, I needed to start the sync. Why when the device is plugged in already doesn’t it do this automatically? Maybe there is a setting for this somewhere? Compare this to my Pocket PC which is synced via USB. I use the program eWallet and whenever I add a new site user/pass it syncs with my Pocket PC without a manual sync. Might just be a settings thing here for the Zune, but I’d like it to work the same way.

Zune 2 is definitely more than an incremental improvement and the fact that they made the firmware and new marketplace backwards compatible is a great thing, thank you Microsoft. Should leave some of the Zune haters of v1 less to complain about. As for buying a Zune 2 player? Haven’t done that yet, but probably will be doing so as our youngest son needs a player. Sounds like a good Christmas present. Also, as we’ve grown our music collection past 30GB since I’ve been ripping our CDs into MP3, the need is there.

Great White is on the list of 80s bands that I’ve seen in concert and will buy every new CD, searching perhaps hopelessly at this point for the days that they rocked.

I missed the July 17 release of Great White’s reunion CD Back to the Rhythm until I saw the band mentioned recently (positively) and visited their website mistabone.com and news of their reunion hit my radar. Why the original Great White band members were disharmonious, I don’t know and probably wouldn’t care because what bands get along any more, really? The music is what we want as fans. Bring us the music.

Bought Rhythm at Best Buy this weekend and have been listening to the tracks. My thoughts on each track and the overall CD below, but first a little history on the band.

Great White started as a hard rock band with some impressive tunes like Stick It, Out of the Night, Streetkillers and Rock Me, I’ve been chasing follow-up albums that compared. They seemed to get more and more mellow over the years, at one point becoming ensnared as a Led Zeppelin cover band (see Great Zeppelin). Like a lot of 80s bands that rose and fell in the same decade, they’ve been trying to rekindle that spark ever since.

The heavily Robert Plant influenced Jack Russell takes up the vocals. Mark Kendall grinds the axe and while he started as more of a rocker, he became more blues oriented in his style of playing after the first couple albums. For some that is a good thing, for me, I liked him better the way he started playing. Michael Lardie plays backup guitar, keyboards and harmonica. Audie Desbrow pounds the skins and Sean McNabb is on bass guitar.

Great White won’t likely be remembered for their music. They’ve had only a few decent songs since the early days, suffered various line-up changes and worse, suffered tragedy a few years back in a nightclub fire that claimed the lives of over 150 people and their lead guitarist of the time.

Great White isn’t about to forget this night either, dedicated the album to those who attended that show:

“This album is dedicated to those who lost their lives and those who were injured on that tragic night of February 20, 2003 in West Warwick, Rhode Island. You are forever in our prayers and in our hearts. May God bless you and yours.”

“Back to the Rhythm” - 2/5 - Somewhat lackluster title track. Some good guitar effects, but they are mixed too soft. Bring that edge.
“Here Goes My Head Again” - 2.5/5 - average Great White track, but points for a good Mark Kendall guitar solo.
“Take me down” - 1/5 - seems like weak B-side filler. Wish they would have left this out.
“Play On” - 3.5/5 - first of several mellow songs on the CD. Nice acoustic guitar, keyboard and lyrics. Considering GW’s storied history, this song fits the band. A good “oooooohhhhh yeah” wail before the solo. I like this one.
“Was it the Night?” - 2/5 - Solid opening guitar solo, that winds down to another mellow and forgettable track.
“I’m Alive” - 3/5 - I like the chorus, but the rest of the song is average.
“Still Hungry” - 3/5 - Makes me wonder if Great White is still hungry. This track shows they might be drawing on a few of their roots. Seems a little bit like the song “Hungry” by King Kobra, another 80s band. I like the last third of the song the best. I was left hungry for an extended guitar solo. This one should have been 7 or 8 minutes with a blazing solo. Lost opportunity.
“Standin’ On The Edge” - 1/5 - Like Play On, this one feels too much like filler.
“How Far is Heaven?” - 2/5
“Neighborhood” - 2.5/5
“Cold World” - 3/5 - Listen to the song “Humans Being” by Van Halen and then compare to this one. The similarities are disturbing, particularly the solo. I expected Hagar to sing this one. I should give it a 0/5 for the lack of originality, but since I like the Van Hagar song, this uncredited tribute gets a nod.
“Just Yesterday” - 4/5 -my favorite mellow track on the CD. Opens with an acoustic guitar solo. Similar mellow Jack Russell vocals that can be found on past songs like “Save all your Love” when this was fresh. Another good mellow acoustic GW song this reminded me of was “Gone With The Wind.” Nice way to close the CD.

When I saw Great White touring with Judas Priest on the Defenders of the Faith tour in the 80s it seems like the band was at their prime creatively. I wanted to like Back To The Rhythm Again, but after several listens it would be more aptly titled: Back To The Same Crap Again.

These guys might be trying hard with a reunion and 80s reunions I do appreciate, but this album isn’t anything new. It’s more of the same stuff they’ve been putting out since Once Bitten Twice Shy. Give me their first four or five albums over everything they’ve put out since. I won’t count them out or say they are washed up, but they are stuck in the same rut as the Scorpions (although I like their new CD better): too many songs that sound the same.

I’d like to see Great White go way back before the rhythm to the harder stuff. They were better with that rough, unpolished sound. Come on, boys, “Rock Me” again. This isn’t a terrible effort, but not something I’d recommend buying unless you’re a fan of the band’s last few albums. Many of the Amazon reviewers must like Great White as a blues rock band, as they have 4 out of 5 stars as of this writing. For me, it’s a below average effort from a group that’s capable of better. Grade: C-.

You know, I’ll probably never understand calling the lawyers out to go after fansites.

Prince is a great guitarist but he needs to remember who’s butts are in the seats and buying his albums if he’s sending the lawyers after his fans.

via Grooveshark:

Prince and an army of lawyers are working to disband several large web communities dedicated to the pop star. Several Web sites have received cease and desist notices to discontinue use of all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything else Prince wants.

All images? Are you kidding me? Prince better get his lawyers over to Google — wait, no, Perfect 10 already tried that in court and lost.

What if you were a celebrity?
I’m certainly not a celebrity, but let’s assume for a moment I did something that made me one.

The content of this blog, including the pictures unless otherwise noted are all copyrighted, but I wouldn’t try to prevent anybody from setting up a Hmm fan site and I’d find it reasonable that some portion of content was referenced and used. Nobody needs my permission for Fair Use and with a fansite especially I’d be willing to provide additional latitude, wouldn’t you?

I might politely and personally ask a site that was using too much of the content to be cool about it, but would I call up the lawyers and start sending C&Ds? No way. I know, I know, easy to say when you aren’t in the almighty shower of the great Purple Rain One, but let’s be real. It’s one thing to go after splogs which suck the life out of your content and make money from your efforts without giving anything back. It’s another thing to break out the lawyers on your freaking fans who are helping to promote and support you.

Didn’t Prince learn anything from Metallica? Is there another side to this that makes sense?

Design UI dangers of using only automated text:

Hmm, which System of a Down should I choose? Maybe that’s the million dollar question. Flip a coin? I chose the default selected. Conversely, check out the design of the System of a Down CD mentioned above:

Looks just like a ripped CD. Bet it sold fairly well.

A couple of notable moments, including a few firsts in my life, occurred at last night’s Rick Springfield concert at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, WA. Before the concert, we picked up Springfield’s Written in Rock 2-CD set retrospective of his career to date. We paid $18.99 at a local record store, but I see it for $24.98 on Amazon [affiliate].

The 2-CD set includes a full 42 songs with a couple of covers of Beatles songs (”Eleanor Rigby” and “For No One”) and extensive liner notes by Rick himself discussing how each track came to be created. For example, on Jessie’s Girl is that the song was originally written about his friend’s hot girlfriend that Rick knew he would never have, was titled Randy’s Girl, and included a long guitar solo that was shortened to be more pop chart friendly. I like when artists provide this background with CDs. Lots of pictures too.

I think my favorite parts were when Springfield came out into the audience while performing — literally. Of the numerous live concerts I’ve seen over the years, I’ve only seen one other artist do this, Air Supply. The guitarist from Armored Saint did one of those jump into the crowd things and they didn’t catch him. Ouch, that has to hurt. Springfield came out into the crowd during the song, “Don’t talk to Strangers” and then again during “Human Touch” and a cover of The Who’s “My Generation.” He also covered “Red House” in the setlist.

Springfield pointed the microphone to the crowd and had some of them, including one of the security guards, sing the words: “Don’t talk to strangers.” Nice touch!

My fellow rocker friend Matt Wardlaw stopped by yesterday in the comments to tell me that Rick Springfield puts on a good show. With that kind of endorsement, I figured it would be a good time — and it was. A new reader, Mufi, tells me how she got box seats to see Metallica and confirms that marriage does involve sacrifices.

Last night’s show was no sacrifice. I was entertained.

Mufi also points out that Springfield has a new CD of Christmas songs out. He played one of his original Christmas songs. I don’t know about Christmas rock records, although I kind of liked Twisted Sister Twisted Christmas CD.

In 2008 Springfield has a new CD coming out with a song called “Who Killed Rock” that he opened with last night. I was kind of surprised how much Rick’s guitarist wailed. The guy could really play well. Kind of reminded me of David Lee Roth’s guitarist. Springfield is good on the fretboard too, although during his solo he muffed a few notes and the guitar was noticeably out of tune.

As expected, Springfield played his several hits: “Affair of the Heart,” “I’ve Done Everything For You,” “State of the Heart,” and of course his #1 song “Jessie’s Girl” which was the last song before the encore which included two more songs. One, I wasn’t familiar with (”Wasted” ?) and the final song “Love is alright” concluded the performance.

The mix was decent, although at times I had a hard time hearing Springfield’s vocals. My wife pointed out that he seemed to yell a little too much instead of singing. And he forgot the words to a couple songs, saying “shit” into the microphone at one point instead of the actual lyrics. I’d kind of expect this from one of the first few shows, but according to his tour page, he’s put on dozens of shows before this one. Maybe the songs he muffed the words weren’t played at most of these shows? In my experience, it’s not that uncommon for artists to forget words here and there on live shows.

I was surprised how animated Springfield was on stage. He threw his guitar way up in the air and caught it one-handed, he took roses and other flowers from the crowd and strummed his guitar with them, severing the flowers and having petals fly everywhere. Matt was right, Springfield puts on a good show. We had decent seats, sort of near the back, at $35 a ticket (pictured), near the fire exit on the left side of the stage.

No pictures were allowed to be taken at the venue, which I saw being broken by several fans. At one point, Springfield took a cell phone from one of the female fans and called “mom” telling her that he was Rick Springfield and that he had a “condom.” The crowd roared. Now that’s interacting with the fans.

When the concert was over we hung around the casino for 30 minutes or so, letting the crowd dissipate, playing one of the video keno machines. After her and I lost $100, my wife won it back by hitting 4 out of 4. Then something strange happened: we went to cash the EZ Ticket out and were told the computers were “all down.” The workers were milling around in a state of confusion and concern, wondering aloud: “the IT guys better get on this.”

Since we couldn’t put the ticket in any of the machines in the back of the casino, we moved forward to the front half of the casino and came upon this Chain Reaction $1 slot machine along the side of the machine. I stuck the $100 ticket in it and was immediately credited with 100 credits. I planned to only play it a few spins and on the fourth spin came up one Chain Reaction symbol and two red 7’s in the middle: $300! Spun it a couple more times and then hit the cash out button. Now we had a ticket for $394. Took that to the main cage where long lines of people were cashing in tickets. We had no problem waiting to make over $300! Thanks Emerald Queen Casino for paying us to go see Rick Springfield — and then some. First time I can remember ever being paid to go see a concert. Nice.

Summary and grade
Overall, the concert was a solid, satisfying experience. Musically I wasn’t as enthralled as at some other concerts, but that’s a matter of personal taste. I’d probably pay to see Springfield again someday — and would definitely be willing to get paid to go see him thanks to gambling winnings (that likely won’t happen again) — which is a considerable improvement from yesterday’s post where I was reluctant to attend. Glad my wife wanted to go, a lot of fun. Grade: B.

This morning I learned Rick Springfield turned 58 years old on August 23 of this year and has returned to playing Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital. When he last appeared regularly on General Hospital in the eighties he also had some success on the guitar and singing. And then he went off radar until 2005.

What do you know about soap operas? I know a little bit and have a secret to tell.

(drumroll)

In the ninth grade in Wisconsin I used to ride my bike home for lunch, microwave a burrito and watch Days of our Lives. There was this Roman is a slasher plotline that hooked me. That’s my only time watching or following any soap operas. How about you, have you ever watched any soaps? Be honest now or the blog demons will get you!

A honey-do on the schedule tonight with the arrival of Rick Springfield in concert? My wife told me yesterday, “You better take me somewhere this weekend,” — and then added that she would like to see Rick Springfield.

Marriage involves sacrifices and concessions and it’s not like going to a Springfield concert is akin to bathing in sulfuric acid. Also, the opposite sex scenery — IE. the other women lusting after Springfield in attendance — probably won’t hurt my aging eyes either.

Hope I don’t lose my rocker edge by admitting I kind of liked Springfield’s hit song, Jessie’s Girl. Beyond Jessie’s Girl, I barely recognize any of his other greatest hits. We saw Air Supply live when the Emerald Queen had acts on the boat and both enjoy seeing live acts, so maybe Springfield will surprise me. That’s if we get tickets, as we don’t have any yet and the Ticketmaster ticketing system is down as of this writing. We’ll probably just stop by the casino later today and buy them. $35-55 each, about the going rate for a concert these days.

There is something scarier than the prospect of seeing Rick Springfield live in concert: answering this nightmarish question:

(shudder)

Smile, it’s Saturday.