Last week, I had a nice opportunity to test out my brand-new DSLR camera — a Nikon D5000 — in a more difficult setting: a Brothers Past concert at Brooklyn Bowl. Although I’m still getting the hang of the thing, I was able to grab a few decent shots.

If you want the full round-up of the show (with setlist and video), head on over to Live Music Blog. Otherwise, check out a few of my favorite shots below…

Not bad for my first attempt, eh?

Head on over to my flickr page, if you want to check out the full photo set.

Earlier this week, I finished a longer post about a new iphone app that streams concert recordings from the Live Music Archive and included an interview I did with the app’s developers:

Music Archive App Streams Live Music Archive to Your iPhone | An Interview with the Developers

A couple weeks back, a new iPhone app called Music Archive was released on the iTunes App Store that streams concert recordings from the Live Music Archive. I was pretty excited to see this at that time, and I know that many of our readers will also be interested in this app if they haven’t already heard about it.

I’ve not yet posted about it because I decided that I wanted to dig a bit deeper into its development. One of the things that struck me was that the developers are offering it as a paid app, but what they’re tapping into is a database of non-commercial content offered by a non-profit organization (archive.org). Not only that, when I first checked it out, I noticed that they hadn’t directly addressed the issue on their website or in the iTunes store. As such, I not only wanted to get a bit more background on how the project came together, but I also wanted to explore some of the underlying issues related to using the LMA’s non-commercial content for a more commercial enterprise like an iTunes app.

Since reaching out the developers — Josh Bergen and Brett Erpel — they not only answered some of my questions but they also gave me a free demo copy of the app. I’ve had a few days to give it a test-run. Although it isn’t perfect, it nicely taps into the LMA’s database of available MP3s and puts them at your fingertips with a slick interface. It’s pretty damn cool to have so many concert recordings at your fingertips. I’m sure they’ll continue to make useful tweaks and nicely improve the app in future versions.

I’ve been really pleased with the reaction to the post so far, as it has generated some great commentary. What’s also interesting about this is that the app directly hits on what I was referring to in my recent post on music streaming services and their lack of live music tracks: Music from the Cloud? A Live Music Fan’s Take on the New Music Streaming Services . In this post, I touched on the fact that there are a plethora of free sources for live music on the web, but that there aren’t really any mainstream music streaming services making use of them or serving the live music fan in a direct way. The Music Archive app is just a start and a bit more limited than my original vision, but it’s still very cool to see such a well-timed example of where I was going with that post.

Of course, if this kind of live music geekery is of any interest, then please also check out my Univ. of Chicago Master’s Thesis, as it touches on a lot of similar topics: “When we’re finished with it, they can have it”: Jamband Tape-Trading Culture.

Phish Friday: An Open Letter to Phish and Red Light Management
(aka We Need a High-Quality Paid Webcast for Phish Concerts)

I definitely felt I made some good points and did my research, but I was honestly taken aback at the response — both in terms of commentary and site traffic — that this post generated. Also, while it specifically addresses Phish and their fan base, I think there are aspects of my arguments that could be made for any number of large and mid-tier touring acts out there today.

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Here’s a brief intro:

After witnessing the evolving and ever-expanding online activity surrounding Phish’s recent reunion tour, I’m now thoroughly convinced that the Phish fan base is primed and ready for a high-quality and paid live video stream for the band’s next tour. If done properly and in innovative Phish fashion, it could create an untapped revenue stream for the band while allowing more Phish fans to engage with the band’s music – in particular those fans that can’t make it out to every show on tour.

Given the band’s recent history of wanting to scale down their in-house operations, I could see why you might think that a large-scale paid webcast would not be worth the large investment and effort it most certainly would require. But it’d be wrong to think so. There are some very compelling reasons why this should happen now and why Phish is the band to do it.
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Come join the conversation at Live Music Blog.

Live Music 2.0: Concerts and the Social Web

Here’s a brief intro:

Over the past few years, as this whole web 2.0 thing has really grown and progressed, we’ve seen a number of new sites launch that are specifically geared towards live music fans on the web. In a sense, all of them exist to help fans track and follow their favorite touring bands/artists in a variety of ways, but with a focus on their live shows rather than their studio output (which is amply covered by a slew of Music 2.0 sites and services).

While a lot of these sites have not yet emerged into the larger music business landscape, there’s no doubt in my mind that web technologies in general will continue to affect and disrupt the live music space, as they’ve already been doing quite drastically with the recording industry. Back when I was able to dedicate more of my free time to Live Music Blog, I was really interested in exploring this space in depth. Although we have occasionally posted about some of these sites — mentioning iLike.com and ShowClix or talking up the latest feature from JamBase — we’ve never really focused on them directly as a key topic. We’d like to change that. Since we are a site dedicated to live music, it only makes sense to look at the related web services and sites that serve all of US as a community of fans. I’d like to finally re-visit my original idea and dig a bit deeper into all the sites and services that form what we call “Live Music 2.0.”

More (and much more to follow) over at Live Music Blog.

I finally made my triumphant return to Live Music Blog, after a fairly long hiatus due to all our moving chaos earlier this summer. Since I was lucky enough to catch a few Phish shows this summer, I decided to collect what I thought were the best improvisational segments from all of their summer shows. I mixed them all together DJ-style, and we just posted the mix as our latest podcast on LMB:

Podcast #065 | Best of Phish Summer ‘09 Improv

I’ve had various friends comment on my mixes, suggesting that they’re great workout and/or study music (since a lot of these are similar “improv-only” mixes of all instrumentals). So even if you’re not a Phish fan, you might like this for studying if you find music with vocals distracting. Of course, if you are a Phish fan, I think it goes without saying that you’ll dig the mix.

This is our 65th podcast, so there are obviously a bunch of others in the archives. Check ‘em out here: Live Music Blog Podcasts.

Enjoy!