bands

Last night, I started a professional audio production program at the University of Washington Extension. There are about 40 students in the class. A half dozen or so are like me--in our 30s or older, with full-time careers outside the music industry, but with a longtime interest in recording and a lot of experience writing and playing music.

But most are full-time students, or between college and graduate school, and are expecting to make a career in the music industry. Some of these kids are frighteningly single-minded--there's an 18-year-old who's been messing around with recording software since he … Read more

Onetime social-networking leader Friendster has announced a new feature called "Fan Profiles," which is essentially a way for celebrities, bands, companies, nonprofit organizations and other entities to self-promote.

Among "early adopters" of the new feature are Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, comedian Dane Cook, and pop-punk band Fall Out Boy, all of which now have "fan profiles" on the social network.

The formal announcement was made at a press lunch at the DigitalLife consumer technology trade show in New York on Thursday.

It's an ambitious move for the struggling social network, but one … Read more

If nothing else here at Crave, we're all about finding new ways to disrupt your workplace with various toys and robots, especially on a Friday afternoon. And though we generally prefer items that can fly, crawl or jump on command, there are a few more traditional forms of juvenile gadgetry that can draw equally amusing results. To wit: the "Animated Robotic Power Trio."

Armed with a tiny guitar, keyboard and drums, your own personal band will play in sync with any MP3 player to the certain dread of any cubicle mate within earshot if its product literature … Read more

And here we thought the "Serene" phone was weird. Bang & Olufsen, normally one of our favorite tech-meisters, is again testing the limits of our imagination (if not patience) with another avant-garde design--from a remote control, of all things.

The new "Beo 5" eschews the compact and streamlined form favored by most of today's remotes, including its predecessor, instead looking something like a doorknob with an LCD glued onto it. Navigation is handled both by the click wheel on its aluminum ball handle and its touch screen, which has 12 "dynamic buttons" that … Read more

Apparently a Chuck E. Cheese/Showbiz Pizza Place animatronic band has found new life singing modern hits like "Lithium" from Evanescence, "London Bridge" from Fergie, "Dani California" from RHCP, and my favorite, "Ms. New Booty" by Bubba Sparxxx (shown after the break).

If you've never experienced the delicious trauma of seeing the Chuck E. Cheese furry robot band as a kid, then these videos will probably be more funny than creepy. For the rest of us who remember crying under the table while holding back pizza vomit, these videos tap into an especially dark place populated by H.R. Pufnstuf episodes and David Bowie's musical interludes in Labyrinth.… Read more

My grandparents lived very long lives. My mother's father was born in 1893, grew up on a sheep ranch in Australia, fought for the British in World War I, suffered numerous life-threatening calamities and collisions as a semi-professional adventurer, and lived 86 years. My father's parents both lived to the age of 96. And my mother's mother lived to be more than 100 years old. She was a professional musician who played in the big bands, backing movies like Abbott and Costello's Here Come the Co-eds and played most famously in Phil Spitalny's Hour of Charm All Girl Orchestra, chronicled in the book Swing Shift. (Sadly that book was written after the memories of most of the sources had begun to degrade.)… Read more

Google wants to put its money where its mouth is...to the tune of at least $4.6 billion.

The search giant said Friday that it's willing to participate in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming wireless spectrum 700MHz band auction and pay the minimum reserve of $4.6 billion.

But for Google to participate, there's a catch. It's requiring the FCC to adopt all four of its licensing recommendations, no matter who ultimately wins the bidding process.

Google has also been pressing the FCC to reserve a portion of that spectrum to be used primarily, or … Read more

We can't imagine why, but some might say the world really doesn't need another MP3 player. But Bang & Olufsen rarely seems to play by conventional rules--or wisdom.

True to form, the high-end company has taken yet another unexpected turn. The "BeoSound 6" is surprisingly simple, as Engadget rightly observes, given the B&O reputation for flamboyance in its various products. But sometimes, less is more: As evidenced by the "BeoSound 2," unconventional form doesn't necessarily translate to exceptional quality.

The BeoSound 6 is nevertheless sleekly designed with its silver casing, spare … Read more

One of the most buzzed-about games of E3 this year is Rock Band, EA's answer to Activision's popular Guitar Hero franchise. Instead of playing along to onscreen songs with one or two plastic guitar-shaped controllers as in Guitar Hero, Rock Band adds a drum kit and microphone to the mix, letting up to four rockers do their thing at one time.

The guitars are similar to the plastic Guitar Hero axes you're familiar with, and the mic is a standard plastic number you might find on a cheap karaoke machine. The drum kit is clearly the main … Read more