Crave

Offbeat, melodic, and pretty, Clem Snide stays in heavy rotation at my house.

In the 1960s, I heard new music on the radio.

The best DJs turned me on to new stuff all the time. Next best source was friends--I'd go over to their house to check out their new LPs. Record reviews in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice flagged intriguing up-and-comers. I used to find new music in record stores, but that rarely happens anymore.

Nowadays it's Sirius satellite radio and Pitchfork. And just snooping around the Internet, including artists' Web sites, I luck onto new music. My latest find: a quirky little band by the name of Clem Snide. Their new album "Hungry Bird" is sweet and melodic, and their odd tunes have real staying power. Sounds pretty decent too.

So how do you find new music? Vote in the poll. And if I missed any options, let me know in the TalkBack section below.

The worst sounding recording of 2007, so far.

Iffy sound quality isn't a new problem. Bad sound can't directly be blamed on digital, analog, vinyl, CD, or even MP3. Those are release formats; the quality of the recording itself is what I'm talking about.

Granted, personal taste plays a big part in defining good or bad sound. For every person who says the sound is clear and detailed, there's another who thinks it's ragged and harsh.

That said, the trend of late is toward spitty distortion, the kind that obscures the sound of the vocals and instruments, and buries them in grunge. I'm not opposed to grit that adds an edge to music, but I can't stand recordings made by people who either don't know what they're doing or are too deaf to notice the error of their ways.

Bob Dylan, of all people, agrees with me.

"You listen to these modern records--they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like--static," Dylan said in a Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Lethem in September 2006.

He's not just referring to other people's records; he included his own record, "Modern Times," in his rant: "Even these songs probably sounded 10 times better in the studio when we recorded 'em." I believe Dylan. That album was a blurry wall of sound. You can hardly hear individual instruments.

The worst recording of 2009 so far--it's still early--is the Heartless Bastards' "The Mountain" CD. It's too bad because I really like the music. It rocks hard, and I love Erika Wennerstrom's strange voice, but there's severe distortion whenever she sings loud.

The distortion was so incredibly annoying that my speakers' tweeters sounded broken. If the distortion just appeared on the hard-edged, bluesier numbers, I might have thought that it was intentional, but the sound was just as ragged on "So Quiet," in which Wennerstrom is accompanied by violin.

(Credit: Chumby)

Owners of the lovable (well, lovable-looking at least) multimedia device Chumby, are getting new ways to listen to music, watch music videos, and get music news.

Chumby announced on Tuesday that its leather-encased Internet clock radio of the same name would now allow users to tune into personalized radio stations using their Pandora accounts. When users indicate a song or artist that they enjoy, Pandora responds by playing selections that are musically similar.

If you like waking up to music, but prefer waking up to music videos, you'll be happy to hear that Chumbys will now be able to use Avot Media's video-streaming tool.

Finally, you'll never have to leave the washroom again, as Chumby can now receive music news from RollingStone.com, as well as UsMagazine.com.

BTW, if you're thinking of clicking on that Us Weekly link, don't do it--unless you want to lose the next three hours of your life.

Went to see Martin Scorsese's new concert film Shine A Light with the Rolling Stones, and I have to admit the aged rockers put on a good show. Sure, Mick and Keith's life-long love affair with the blues is still going strong, but their music has become strangely soulless. They jump around, make faces, and the energy level is high, but I didn't care. I've seen it all before, better--the Rolling Stones are now just a machine, reveling in their own outlaw, devil-may-care ethos, a mere simulation of their former selves. Kinda makes me glad the Beatles never got back together, that band stays forever young. The Beatles' music remains fully intact, pure, and blemish free.

The Beatles' film catalog is uneven all right, but as musical documents, they're all pretty amazing. A Hard Days Night remains a light romp; the tunes come fast and furious, the Beatles are having a blast. Help hasn't aged as well as a film, but the song sequences are still fantastic, Yellow Submarine is still trippy as all get out, Magical Mystery Tour is mostly awful cinema, redeemed with strong tunes. Let It Be has yet to make it to DVD, but even in the Beatles' twilight, the magic was still there.

If you want to see the Stones at their peak, check out Gimme Shelter, a documentary film covering the last days of their 1969 tour. Scorsese's high-speed editing of Shine A Light doesn't help the film, it just fritters away the band's true grit. Scorsese spends way too much time dishing out close ups of Jagger, and rarely covers the complete band. They're mere backup musicians to the star. That's sad, because the Rolling Stones, even now, are much greater than the sum of its members.

Thiel's CS3.7

(Credit: Thiel)

Here's the concept: It's no secret young consumers don't get high-end audio. It just seems like either total BS or an extravagance for the rich. Yes, it can be both of those things, but there's a lot of great, affordable high-end audio that's available to anyone who's truly passionate about music. Here's one quick example, Usher Audio's staggeringly good S-520 speakers that go for $400 a pair (I'll review them in this space soon).

Anyway, a high-end publicist friend of mine proposed this reach out to the youth concept through Rolling Stone magazine. He wanted to blow the magazine's writers away with high-end sound and convinced two of his clients, Canadian electronics manufacturer Bryston, and Thiel, a speaker company from Kentucky, to loan Rolling Stone $40K worth of gear for their reviewers to enjoy for three months. Seems like a great "what if" idea to me. Obviously, the reviewers know music, and I can't wait to hear how they're affected by hearing music like never before.

It's a killer system, with a Bryston BCD-1 CD player, Bryston BP-26 preamp, and Bryston 28B-SST power amps mated with Thiel's astonishing CS3.7 speakers and SS2 subwoofer. For guys used to hearing music over $29 PC speakers it's the equivalent moving up from a skateboard to a Chevy Corvette. Now they'll actually get to hear the music they're critiquing at least as well as the people who recorded the tunes in the first place. Who knows, maybe they'll communicate that experience to their readers. Point is, sound matters, and hearing it with the best possible speakers and electronics is a good idea. We'll see.

The gear, installed at Rolling Stone's NYC office

(Credit: Bryston)

(Credit: Brando)

OK, we admit this is really stupid. But we're all about accessorizing here at Crave, and we know that there's no accounting for taste. So for those who are drawn to such items as the "Lips Phone" and the "KissPhone," we feel obligated to pass along this "USB Mini-Lips Speaker" from Hong Kong's Brando (of course) to complement the ensemble. The 2-watt speaker connects to anything with a 3.5-millimeter jack and is small enough to be worn around the neck as an ill-advised fashion statement. An unsolicited word of advice: If it starts to talk back, we suggest keeping it to yourself.

It's one of those as you like it stories. We like the music that we like. Me, I hated the sound of Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" CD that came out last year, and Bob wasn't too crazy about it either. "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like--static." That's what Dylan told Jonathan Lethem in Rolling Stone magazine, September 7, 2006.

I dissed Modern Times for its muddled sound. Dylan's vocal was upfront, maybe too loud relative to the instruments, and the overall sound irritated me to the point it distanced me from the music. Oh well, Modern Times hit #1 on the charts and was one of Dylan's best selling albums of all time. So "atrocious" sound doesn't seem to affect sales. And that's a good thing since almost everybody who listened to Modern Times heard it either over pipsqueak computer speakers, the freebie earbuds that come with iPods, or in the car. Hardly the sort of environments where sound quality would be appreciated. Me and Bob, we bemoaned the sound of modern music. It's too often an overly compressed, intentionally ear-shredding noise that doesn't sound like any sound heard in nature. Yes, that might be cool for electronic music or hard-core rock, but ear-shredding static ain't a nice adjective to apply to acoustic music. CD, MP3 or iTune, Modern Times didn't cut it.

Real music from say, an acoustic guitar played in your bedroom, doesn't sound anything like that. Ah, but slip on Dylan's "Bringing it All Back Home" CD or better yet the LP, and check out "Mr. Tambourine Man" or "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and listen to the guitars. They sound like strings and wood. That entire album was recorded in three days--January 13, 14, and 15, 1965. Now, return to 'Times, and see if there's something going very wrong with the sound. The four decades of recording technology have taken their toll. Static, yeah, Bob summed it up nicely.

I'd be the first to admit that sound quality is entirely subjective--we like what we like--but the aesthetic has shifted. And the Audiophiliac and Bob don't like it one bit.

In 1953, Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy. Fourteen years later, Jann Wenner published the first issue of Rolling Stone. Today, both magazines have published hundreds of issues and made an undeniable mark on American culture.

Now, instead of spending months and thousands of dollars on eBay, you can read those iconographic issues on your computer. The Bondi Digital Publishing Cover to Cover series collects back issues on DVD, which can be searched and read with the company's proprietary software. The first two "Cover to Cover" collections are Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years and Playboy Cover to Cover: The '50s. Every Rolling Stone magazine published since 1967 and every Playboy issue published in the '50s can now be read on your computer.

The magazines are reproduced from scans from the original issues. They aren't simply scanned PDFs, though; the text in every issue is stored and cataloged, so you can search the entire Rolling Stone archives or every 1950s Playboy issue for author, subject, band, Playmate, or other criteria. If you want to read all of Hunter S. Thompson's stories from Rolling Stone, you can just type in his name instead of poring over the hundreds of issues.

Besides the digital back issues, each collection comes with its own tangible bonuses. Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years comes with a two-year subscription to Rolling Stone and a book of highlights and history in the magazine. The book isn't just some liner notes--it's a bulky, 200+ page tome of musical and cultural history. Playboy Cover to Cover: The '50s doesn't come with a subscription to the magazine, but it does come with its own book, plus a paper reproduction of the very first issue of Playboy featuring Marilyn Monroe.

Both Cover to Cover collections will be available in November, but you can pre-order them from either magazine's Web site or from Bondi's web site on September 15. Rolling Stone Cover to Cover: The First 40 Years will retail for $125, and Playboy Cover to Cover: The '50s will retail for $100.