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ASMW – Cubicle

“We’re gonna make millions, millions I say!”

This week’s band is a high-powered post-punk group from California called Cubicle. The first thing that got my attention while browsing new albums at Amie Street was the album cover, an obvious throwback to the old DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles) logo from back in the late, late 80’s skate punk days, but with an update: a briefcase and cellphone. I immediately popped open the player for a few samples and found a band with a lot of energy who find humor in our everyday grind, poke fun at the corporate way of life, the slag, and the slack. Their Myspace page points more toward a “must-see” live show.
“It’s imperative to know how to get scheduled in.”
Be sure to check out “Cooking the Books” and “Corporate Card”.

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ASMW – Odd Girl Out

Some of you who have been around for a while, or have been on road trips with me will see this selection and might wonder ‘whassupwiddat?’. I have three points on that, which I’ll get into after an overview for the less initiated.

While we all tend to be music snobs after years of drilling down into many bands and b-sides, exploring the dark inner circles of the old banged-up record store, and raiding estate sale closets for obscure genres that we’d never have found on our own, I have a well-voiced music snob pet peeve for remakes. This is the point where those who have heard my arguments on them have their eyes glaze over, so I’ll put the full arguments on parade in another post.

My reasons for choosing a cover song to be highlighted this week? First, it’s a true cover. The lyrics are blissfully un-messed-with, the notation remains, but the style has been conformed to the artist. When this is done correctly, it can often lend whole new meanings to the same song or arrangement. Second, It’s K’s birthday, and I felt that a girlband that rocks, and that breaks out with intense energy and a fresh outlook was just perfect to celebrate her big 7th. Third, The other song by Odd Girl Out that I was going to use really kicks in at about 27 seconds, so the demo clip you get here would not do it justice.

Odd Girl Out is a post-punk pop all-girl band from Baltimore who sound a lot like Joan Jett or Letters to Cleo. I got the cover of the Bangles’ Eternal Flame on spotlight here as a dedication for the people in our lives who can light up our whole day just by saying our name.

When you guys finish with your personal flashbacks to big hair, DeLoreans, and jokes about Regan’s memory lapses, Hit the “More From This Artist” button to hear clips of some of their other tracks, including a really kicking “Lost in Translation”, a playful nudge at home in “Smalltimore”, and even an ode to “MySpace”.

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Social Network Outages, oh my!

We were talking earlier today on Pownce about a lot of the micro-blogging and social “heartbeat” networking sites having periods of downtime lately.

It’s probably just some growing pains as more people start to use them. And since they are all more of a “pulse” setup, they are using the networks differently than a page of information at a time.

I think it was Friday, Twitter was unresponsive, then yesterday, Pownce and then the early morning hours, the same thing happened with Jaiku. They all seem to working just fine now.

Does anyone remember a recent outage at Mahalo Follow? Anyone? Beuller?

There are a lot of different social networks out there, and I’m starting to see a lot of splintering. I hope that we start to see some integration tools soon to help us stay connected and also to not have a deluge of information. Everyone has their own personal limit for information dump, and these networks can certainly cause a flood. I’m supposing that with some open API’s, we would start to see a lot of cross-network functionality. updating your “status” in one place will update that status in Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc etc at once, and people who are following you or on your friend list in more than one place would only get a single alert or, optionally, none at all. I’d like to see options for some of this integration, but not necessarily a snowballing effect on social networking as a whole. It’s important that the users are able to separate and maintain “public” and “private” identity as well.

A good example would be to never automatically update linkedin from anything added at facebook or myspace. At least until companies stop cyberstalking, and hire people based on their skills and experience. This might take another few years, and two or three more Petite Anglaise stories, but I definitely hope it comes soon. Not that I have anything to hide: I link everything together. I just know a lot of people who have the need to hide their personal lives from their employers, and I find that incomprehensible.

Then there’s another whole ball of wax when you start to think of integrating dating sites.

I found an article at LLRX that gives an intro to social networking sites and tiny bit of history, just in case you are one of my “less-than-technical” readers.