by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Column 297: Playing God

Pandora’s Tim Westergren on the future of music.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren stood alone on the empty oak stage floor of the packed Durham Western Heritage Museum auditorium holding a microphone, looking like Peter Krause from Six Feet Under

, and calmly told the audience of music fans, musicians, business people and techni-geeks what the future of the music industry looks like. If he’s right, we’re all in for a long, boring ride.

Westergren was in town last Tuesday night conducting one of his many “town hall meetings,” where he goes among the masses like a wizened messiah and tells them about the magic of Pandora while answering questions not only about the technology, but about why it’s so damn important.

Westergren believes Pandora and Internet radio will ultimately rescue the drowning, dying music industry. It will do this by offering its listeners only the music they want to hear, and nothing else. Pandora is web-streaming radio powered by the “Music Genome Project” — a complicated algorithm where users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar.  ”Instant personalized radio,” is how Westergren describes it.

He spent the first half-hour talking about Pandora’s origin, about how he maxed out dozens of credit cards and almost went broke, but how the project  eventually broke through. He talked about how the broadcast music industry has become irrelevant, how it no longer speaks to us, and how music has become sonic wallpaper. “What Pandora has done is reconnect people with music,” Westergren said. “That’s why it’s growing.”

But it can’t keep growing unless there are musicians out there supplying the grist for this electronic mill. Westergren said rock stars of the future will be “kind of a middle class of musicians that are really talented, that are willing to work hard and travel, but that don’t have a home anymore” with traditional record labels. And that’s OK because Pandora makes great big record labels unnecessary. Here’s why.

“We (Pandora) know essentially the songs and music people like, and where they live in the United States,” Westergren said. “One vision of the future is that a musician will come to Pandora, log into his information, and literally see a map of the U.S. with his audience plotted out.”

From there, the musician can route his tour, and go to every location where listeners have “thumbed up” (akin to approving) his music in Pandora. Fans who have “opted in” will receive an e-mail two weeks before that musician hits their town or might find out about the concert while listening to Pandora. “That’s when you can start being serious about this musician’s middle class,” Westergren said. “Musicians will be able to make a living instead of living on Ramen.

“Through our service, there will come a time when the day your song gets added to Pandora, you’ll be able to quit your job,” he added. “Because that song goes out and is played for literally millions of people who like your kind of music, who can connect directly with you, who know when you’re coming to town, can buy your CD and join your fan list. It’s this magic kind of eBay, connecting music fans with music more efficiently.”

Westergren said they’ve surveyed listeners and that about 40 percent bought more music after they started listening to Pandora, while only 2 percent bought less. “We’re one of the top affiliates of sales to iTunes and Amazon,” he said.

But more than music sales, Pandora does something that broadcast radio never did — it pays musicians. “When you’re a musician and your song is played on an AM/FM station, the composer is paid a very small amount of money, but the performers get no compensation,” Westergren said. “With Internet radio, we actually pay a very large royalty to the performers. If you took all broadcast radio today and slapped it onto Internet radio it would be billions of dollars of new revenue for the music industry just from radio royalties (that musicians) are not getting right now. That’s the biggest tectonic shift that’s happening for artists.”

Yeah, but doesn’t that make you an artistic dictator? someone asked.

“I like to think of us as being an empowerer of artists,” Westergren said. “We have a team of musicians that determine what should go into Pandora, and it’s based on quality. At that point, we are playing God and are deciding what should go in and what shouldn’t. But I’m OK with that. Pandora is providing opportunity. These are musicians that wouldn’t get heard anywhere else.”

It all sounds so perfect. Maybe it is… except for one little thing: If all you ever listen to is music that you think you like — or that sounds like music that you think you like — how will you ever discover something new, something different, something that could change your life?

What fun is that? I mean, I like Bruce Springsteen as much as the next guy, but Bruce Springsteen Radio? The only thing worse than listening to non-stop Springsteen would be listening to bands that supposedly “sound” like Springsteen. Not only does that deify homogeneity, it’s downright boring.

Even more depressing: If everyone listens only to what Pandora thinks they want to hear, how would we find the next Beatles? We take them for granted as if they’ve always existed, but I’ve been told by people old enough to remember that when the Beatles first arrived, they sounded like nothing anyone had heard before. They certainly wouldn’t have fit onto Beach Boys Radio or Bobby Vinton Radio or Chubby Checker Radio.

Or maybe the ones playing God wouldn’t have let them in at all.

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Two more quick points about Pandora. First, there’s a good chance that Pandora could wind up being the next Myspace in a couple of years — a once-popular online service that is now passe. If Apple ever gets its shit together and puts iTunes “in the cloud” as has been rumored since the company bought Lala.com, it could cripple Pandora. After all Apple’s “Genius” service is designed to do what Pandora does using your personal collection of music.  If iTunes becomes a subscription service, allowing access to millions and millions of songs in the iTunes library, it would provide virtually the same service as Pandora, though Pandora will claim that its “Music Genome Project” is a better solution for finding music that fits your personal taste. Personally, I’d rather have Genius’ variety.

The other point: I created a Little Brazil Radio station in Pandora, and among the “similar music” provided by the genome were songs by Staind and Jon Spencer — not exactly a perfect match. It also played a song by Superchunk which was a good fit. To see if the system was reciprocal, I set up a Superchunk Radio station, but lo and behold after more than an hour, I was never served up a Little Brazil song. If I had been, I would more confidence in Westergren’s claim that Pandora is opening up new listeners to bands, specifically small indie bands.

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Tonight at PS Collective it’s the return of Brad Hoshaw after a month on the road playing solo acoustic shows throughout America. Opening is Pat Gehrman (5 Story Fall, Shovelhead). $5, 8 p.m.

Also tonight, Tim Kasher and his band play Lincoln’s Bourbon Theater with Darren Hanlon and Conduits. $12, 8 p.m. It’s a preview of tomorrow night’s show at The Waiting Room.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Tim Kasher dines with a "special friend."

Tim Kasher: Games People Play

Going solo, Kasher rolls the dice… on love.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Will we ever know the real story behind the songs that make up Tim Kasher’s debut solo album, The Game of Monogamy?

Probably not. “Some friends and family — people who really know me well — try to guess which songs are accounts of my life, and they’re always wrong,” Kasher said while on the road in Dallas. “To me, that’s great. That means I’m getting better as a writer.”

I, too, tried to pry the real meaning behind bitter-worded songs like “Cold Love” (The sheltered life of a couple / Is like living in a bubble), “No Fireworks,” (I thought love was supposed to spill from our hearts / I can’t feel it, no fireworks, no twinkling stars), and “There Must Be Something I’ve Lost,” (When I was young I believed in love / But hey, I also believed in God), which aren’t so much about monogamy as much as the agony of living in monogamy.

“That’s why calling it The Game of Monogamy is so crucial,” Kasher said. “I don’t feel the record is about monogamy. I still yearn for that concept, which is why I call it a game. I also think we could sit here with a panel and they’d all agree that it is a game. It’s not easy, and isn’t it also a pain in the ass?”

But where, exactly, did Kasher’s cynical view of long-term companionship come from? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in the fall of 2009 the singer/songwriter frontman of successful indie bands Cursive and The Good Life seemed to be a happy fiancé, only to become unattached again just a few months later. Kasher, who once admitted that seminal Cursive album Domestica was about his failed marriage, won’t talk about that recent engagement, nor say if it supplied meaning for this record.

“To me, the album is like (The Good Life’s 2004 release) Album of the Year, where I was chronicling the bulk of my experiences over a year,” Kasher said. “I kind of did the same thing with this record. There are specific references to my own life; I can’t deny that, but there’s so much other stuff, too. The story as a whole is a fictional account. That’s what you do as a writer — you base it on your own experiences, and then fictionalize it.”

Tim Kasher, The Game of Monogamy (Saddle Creek Records)

Kasher said he started writing the songs for The Game of Monogamy two years ago when Saddle Creek Records label-mates Azure Ray invited him to play solo at some of their reunion dates, back when he still lived in Santa Monica, California. “I thought it was a good opportunity to start writing my own record, which I always planned on doing,” he said. “I did do that once, back in 1999, but that became a band (The Good Life). This is me starting over.”

In late 2009, Kasher moved from Santa Monica to Whitefish, Montana, after his pal, Stefan Marolachakis of the band The End of the World, told him what a great time he had recording up there. Kasher compared the area of northwestern Montana to the bucolic land seen in the 1992 Robert Redford-directed film A River Runs Through It. “I wrote about half the record in those four months in Whitefish,” he said. “I was really lucky.”

Maybe splitting the songwriting between Santa Monica and Montana explains why the music on The Game of Monogamy comes in two distinct flavors. Acoustic heartbreakers like “Strays” and “The Prodigal Husband” and epic closer “Monogamy” are balanced out by some of the best pop songs Kasher has ever written, including the brass and electronic-handclap driven “I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here,” and simple, swinging “Cold Love,” both of which would be radio hits in any other universe.

Kasher can’t help but be proud of those perfect pop gems. “I wouldn’t say ‘proud,’ I’d say I was pleased, for lack of a better word, with writing ‘Cold Love,'” he said. “It seems like a ridiculous concept that as a musician and songwriter you spend so much time trying to make things so complicated, and spend so much of your life trying to find ways to simplify things. I get more comfort from trying to hit those pop peaks. I love pop music, and those songs are just me being more willing to see them through.”

Backed by a solid band that includes Patrick Newbury on keyboards and trumpet, Dylan Ryan on drums and Lewis Patzner on cello and brass, Kasher had no expectations for this, his first solo tour. “No one knew what to expect, so we all prepared for the worst,” he said. “We never had any false assumptions that people were going to show up because they knew my name.”

But, thankfully, they have. “After 10 years of fairly consistent touring, here I am touring more than I’ve ever toured,” Kasher said. “I thought I’d slow down at some point, but touring is such a huge part of staying afloat.”

So are his other projects. Kasher said he’s working on new Cursive material as well as another solo record. He’s even written a couple more screenplays despite being unable to get his first screenplay, Help Wanted Nights, produced. “The long and short of it is that it didn’t work out, but I’m still feverishly trying to crack into the (film) industry,” he said.

With all that under his belt, the only thing he’s missing is writing the Great American Novel. Kasher just laughed. “If everything went incredibly well, that would be the third chapter of my life.”

Tim Kasher plays with Darren Hanlon & Conduits Friday, Nov. 19, at The Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $10. For more information, call 402.884.5353 or visit waitingroomlounge.com.

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It’s a psychobilly explosion tonight at The Slowdown with Detroit’s Koffin Kats (Stomp!) with The Empires, Rumble Seat Riot, and Omaha’s very own The Filter Kings. $10, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Apologies to whomever I spoke to Saturday night at the Digital Leather show at O’Leaver’s for not sticking around. I showed up at around 10, in time to catch Peace of Shit, but began to feel sick after downing a beer. It must have been something I ate. Regardless, I missed DL and POS, and hopefully will get a chance to catch both bands again in the very near future.

Good shows are becoming more and more rare these days, probably due to the onset of winter, so it’s a real bummer whenever I miss a chance to see any band. That said, tonight at The Bourbon Theater in Lincoln it’s The Hold Steady with Company Of Thieves and Omaha’s own Filter Kings. I’m not a huge Hold Steady fan, but if I were in Lincoln I’d still probably go to this one. $16, 8 p.m.

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Depressed Buttons, the new project featuring Baechle, Fink and Thiele of The Faint, is giving away its latest single, “Ow!” on Facebook and Pitchfork

. Their debut EP, QWERTY, comes out Dec. 7 on Mad Decent. Check it out.

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So I see iTunes now sells Beatles songs. Why is this news?

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Tomorrow, right here at Lazy-i, another in a series of interviews with Tim Kasher. Be there.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

It’s feast and famine around here. No decent shows all week and then four in one night. Come on, guys, lets get organized. Talk to each other. Try not to have all these shows on the same night. Any one of the shows mentioned in the headline could have been tonight (when there’s virtually nothing going on). Instead, we’re forced to do lots of driving around (and spending lots of money) on Saturday. Oh well, it’s better than the alternative, which is what we’ve had this past week.

Before I get to Saturday’s shows, last night’s Tim Westergren town hall at Durham Museum was a packed house, and yes, I was there. I’m writing a column about Mr. Pandora’s comments, specifically dealing with the economic future of the music industry (and musicians), but you’ll have to wait until next Thursday to read it. Needless to say, Westergren’s vision of the future is very bright if you believe that Pandora will emerge as the all-encompassing replacement for broadcast radio. And while I do believe that Internet radio will change how we listen to music at home, in the office and in the car (I’ve been saying it for years, read my year-end predictions (’07) (’08) (’09)), I don’t think a streaming service designed to only play music that sounds identical to one artist or one song is going to be the answer. Seriously, can you imagine listening to a radio station dedicated to Bruce Springsteen (the example used throughout the evening)? Don’t get me wrong, I like Springsteen, but not in large doses; and the only thing worse than listening to non-stop Springsteen would be listening to bands that supposedly “sound” like Springsteen. Pandora has figured out a way to maximize the two things we all hate about traditional radio — repetition and commercials.

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You may have noticed that I mentioned that I’m now posting my column on Thursday instead of  Wednesdays — the move is predicated by the long-awaited debut of the new Omaha Reader website. That’s right folks, John Heaston and his crack staff at The Reader have beat all the competition to the punch, unveiling The Reader‘s “Web 2.0” environment this week. It’s is a huge improvement over the old Reader site, and better than any other local news sites — including The Omaha World Herald‘s unbelievably bad attempt (The OWH really needs to hire someone who knows something about the Web if they want to compete in the online world). So take a moment to browse the new Reader site, where my weekly column will appear (I’m told) on Wednesdays, a day before it appears in Lazy-i. What can I say — they pay me to write it, they should at least get the first post before it appears here on Thursdays.

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So, what’s going on this weekend?

Well, there’s nothing going on tonight (Girl Talk is at Sokol Auditorium, but it’s been sold out for a long, long time), but tomorrow night…

Just announced is the return of Digital Leather to O’Leaver’s. The band has been on hiatus most of the summer, and touring in Europe the past few weeks. I’m told they’ve had a finished album in the can since this spring waiting for a release. Maybe we’ll hear some of the new material Saturday night? FREE, 9:30 p.m., with Peace of Shit.

Also Saturday night, Slumber Party Records is having a fund-raiser at haute vegetarian cuisine restaurant Daily Grub, 1054 So. 20th St. Performers include Conchance, Bear Country, Simon Joyner, Talking Mountain, Sam Martin, Sean Pratt, Thunder Power, Alex McManus (the Bruces), and Honeybee. A $20 ticket gets you dinner and the music; or you can just go for the music for $10. Dinner starts at 7; music starts at 9. For more info and tickets go to slumberpartyrecords.com/dailygrubconcert/

Meanwhile, also tomorrow night, the audio violence of Lincoln’s Masses hits the stage at Slowdown Jr. along with Dirty Talker (Lincoln), Lightning Bug (Omaha) and Irkutsk (ex-(If Only He Had) The Power). $8, 9 p.m.

Finally, Noah’s Ark Was a Spaceship headlines a show at The Sandlot (2406 Leavenworth — the Faint’s old Orifice studio/practice space warehouse) with Yuppies, Kansas City band High Diving Ponies and Hominoid. $5 (and $2 beers!), 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Column 296: Searching for Answers
Can Pandora’s founder provide any?

Yesterday I conducted an interview with a nationally known musician where I mentioned that I bought his most recent CD. He laughed and said, “You bought it?” I asked what was so funny, and he said, “Oh nothing, just the idea that someone actually purchased music.”

And I thought to myself: This is where we are now. The idea of buying music has finally evolved into a joke that makes even the musicians themselves laugh in disbelief.

That is the reality of today’s music industry. No one expects to get paid for selling their music. Not anymore. Few musicians — certainly no local musicians — are counting on supporting themselves through music sales. It has become a matter of fact. And though this has been a reality for a few years, I’m only now really seeing the impact.

In the past month I’ve interviewed three successful indie bands — bands that thrived during the early part of the ’00s — and all said they’ve seen the well dry up. They now consider their careers to be in the “starting over” phase. They say they don’t know where the money is going to come from, and even their touring income, which was never huge to begin with, is slowly fading away. These bands are nationally recognized talent, and in any other era that would have been enough to keep them going. Not any more.

I’ve watched as one of the most talented local singer/songwriters — someone who has toured throughout America and Europe — has put away his guitar and keyboard, and is now pursuing a career completely separate from music. He has mouths to feed; it’s that simple. And he wasn’t going to feed them through his music. So he quit. And we no longer will hear the product of his creative, fertile mind. We all lose.

This is not a question of “the cream rising to the top” and the untalented hacks being cast aside in some sort of Darwinian culture model. Music has become so enthusiastically devalued by the buying public — or more importantly, by youth with disposable income — that the idea of paying for it seems as comical a concept as paying to watch television or to surf the Internet.

Industrious musicians with enough career traction are finding other ways to earn cash — specifically by selling publishing rights to their songs for use in commercials or TV shows or movies. What once was considered “selling out” is now smart business. No longer do we sneer when we hear an old Gang of Four song used to sell XBox game consoles. In fact, whenever we hear a band we’re familiar with on a commercial or in the background of some shitty MTV reality show, we quietly cheer because we know those musicians probably have some sort of income that will allow them to continue performing.

As Guster’s Ryan Miller said during our recent interview, the concept of “selling out” disappeared when people started stealing music five or six years ago. He’s right.

This lengthy and somewhat bleak commentary is merely a pre-amble to get you to go see Tim Westergren this Thursday at Durham Western Heritage Museum (moved from PS Collective due to crowd size). Westergren helped create Pandora Radio, an online service that plays music on your computer or cell phone, with content based on your personal taste. The “station” is powered by the “Music Genome Project” — a complicated algorithm where users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar.  “It’s instant personalized radio,” is how Westergren described it on The Colbert Report.

Listening to Pandora costs… nothing. There is a subscription service available, but most people listen to the free version that subjects them to advertising, Westergren said. I’ve listened to Pandora on my iPhone. It works very well. And it’s free. So, that’s good, right? Or is it simply perpetuating the myth that all music is free and has no value?

Look, I’m not trying to get you to show up at the event and bag on Westergren. Pandora pays royalties that are supposed to end up in musicians’ pockets. Instead, go to the “town hall” and ask him how musicians will be able to make a living making music in the future. Westergren is a very smart guy. He’s Mark Zuckerberg smart. He’s got to have answers. He better, or else he’s going to run out of quality new music to serve up on Pandora.

It’s all about sustainability. If you over-fish streams without thinking about replenishing the supply, your nets are going to start coming back empty, except, of course, for the flavorless bottom-feeders that no one wants. The same philosophy holds true for music. If we don’t start thinking about how musicians and songwriters are going to earn a living in a future where people laugh at the idea of paying for music, we’re going to see more and more talent simply give up and walk away, leaving only the least-creative, Bieber-flavored commercial acts and the amateurs.

So here are the details: Pandora founder Tim Westergren is hosting a town hall-style talk at Durham Western Heritage Museum, 801 So. 10th St., Thursday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. Westergren will discuss Pandora’s history and the Music Genome Project, and will take feedback, complaints and suggestions. The event, sponsored by Found in Benson culture zine, is free, however attendees must RSVP by e-mailing tour@pandora.com and mentioning “Omaha” in the subject line, or by RSVPing on the Found In Benson Facebook page. Seating is limited, and is first come, first served.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Not a good week for shows in the Omaha area. In fact, nothing stands out until Masses and Lightning Bug on Saturday at Slowdown, and then Tim Kasher Nov. 19. Egad is this the slow season or am I just overlooking something? It can’t last forever, can it?

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It seems like only yesterday that Alessi Laurent-Marke — or just Alessi as she was known back in the day — was playing gigs at The Waiting Room and wandering around Benson with Jake Bellows. But in fact it’s been more than a couple years since I wrote this goodbye column to Alessi as she headed back over the waters to her home in England. Then out of the blue I hear about

a show she’s playing in Portland, and discover she no longer is with Virgin Records, and hasn’t been since January. Alessi is now with Bella Union (Cocteau Twins’ old label, whose roster includes Beach House, Explosions in the Sky and Dirty Three), who just released her new EP Soul Proprietor. Maybe we can get her back to Omaha while she’s on tour.

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As I type this, I’m listening “Bitch Boyz Like It Rough,” a track off Bad Speler’s second mix collection now available for download at illegal-art.net. “The new mix is called Bill$ Gate and his Michael Soft Umpire PRESENT : The Babble iFad,” said Bad Speler mastermind Darren Keen. “It is a lot faster, smoother, and almost has a European breakcore influence. mos def something very different for the Midwest, for better or worse. trust me, our grandchildren are gonna love this band!” I’m sure they will, Darren. The mix collection is a pay-what-you-want endeavor, so go to the site, download, and pay what you think it’s worth — now there’s one possible future business model for the music industry. But we’ll talk more about that in this week’s column, which goes online tomorrow.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

This is what we call a late-day post. The event of the evening is the Omaha Entertainment & Arts (OEA) Awards showcase in Benson. More than 20 artists playing in four venues all for one low price of $10. Go to the OEA Facebook page for the lineup and schedule. In all honesty, I haven’t seen half of these bands before (a few of them I’ve never even heard of), and there isn’t a better — or more convenient — way to catch them all at once. First band hits the stage at 8.

Skipping Benson? Check out Talking Mountain at O’Leaver’s with Lawrence, Kansas band Mammoth Life and The Benningtons. $5, 9:30 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

Azure Ray at The Slowdown, Nov. 3, 2010.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

I fully intended to see Azure Ray last night at Slowdown. In fact, I even went down to Slowdown for the show, but unfortunately something came up and I had to leave shortly after taking the above photo during their first song. What very little I heard was, as you’d expect, lovely.

I was disappointed with the crowd size. Maybe 200? Maybe more. The balcony was closed and only about half the floor was filled. Slowdown never seemed so enormous. I guess Maria was right — maybe people don’t know that they’ve got a new album out, even though there were stories in all the usual print media.

I did get to see opener Tim Fite, which was an experience. Fite is a one-man performer who sang along with pre-recorded tracks and a video presentation, all the while doing everything he could to engage the audience (and doing a good job of it). His music is acoustic folk in sort of the Randy Newman vein (pretty stuff) blended with low-bass-beat hip-hop (which was just OK). There’s something about his style that recalls Devo/Talking Heads AV and the childish humor of Daniel Johnston. I haven’t met Fite, but I have to believe that he’s playing a character up there. No one could be that whimsical and fun in real life, but you never know.

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Column 295 was a slight recasting of my review of Bad Luck Charm at The 49’r. You can read the original here. There’s no reason to repost it. However, if you want to see the changes (new lead, new ending) check it out on The Reader‘s website, here (or better yet, pick up a copy of the paper). How long until the wrecking ball makes its first appearance?

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Big show tonight at O’Leaver’s. The headliner is Dapose, who is, of course, Dapose from the Faint rolling out songs from his new record, just released on blank.wav. Marijuana Death Squads is experimental electronics and percussion featuring dudes from Gayngs and Song of Zarathustra. Slapping Purses is, according to the show’s Facebook listing, “one-man beatstorm with suitcases full of electronics and a crazy microphone covered in switches. He opened for the Faint last time at First Ave.” $5, 9:30 p.m.

Also tonight, Wu Tang’s Ghostface Killah is at The Waiting Room with Sheek Louch, Frank Dukes, & Maxilla Blue. $25, 9 p.m.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

If you haven’t already, I suggest that you read the Lazy-i interview with Azure Ray before you head out to their show tonight at Slowdown. The interview is right here. Already read it? Well, read it again. Whatever. Just go to the show, which definitely should feel like a time warp back to those jaunty days of 2003.

I’m told by someone who’s on the Azure Ray tour that opener Tim Fite is worth an early arrival — he’s a one-man multi-media experience. In fact, you might as well get there really early for James Husband, who is really James Huggins, a staple of the Elephant 6 collective and former member of Of Montreal. The fun starts at 9, $14. See you there…

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Since there is no music news worth mentioning, here’s a brief political comment: Two years ago on Election Day, there was a sense of hope in what could happen, mixed with a dreadful sense of fear, also about what could happen. In the end, miraculously, hope won out. Now, two years later, hope has dwindled as fear and ignorance has become the fuel driving this election. I have no aspirations as to any positive outcomes at the polls, especially on local races. A tidal wave of stupidity is engulfing this country, and there’s no stopping it. That, however, will not deter me from my civic responsibilities, no matter how futile they may seem. I will hold my nose and cast my vote, and then go home and try to forget the outcome. I suggest you do the same.

My name is Tim McMahan, and I approved this message.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2010 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.