Question on Ask Metafilter: Why do people prefer music from their teenage years? A lot of great, thoughtful replies. I've thought about this a lot before, but this one was sort of new to me (though it's obvious now that I think about it):

So when you're a young adult and your mind really opens up to the musical experience, you get to hear all these things in different combinations for the first time. You might never learn intellectually what a chord progression or a key change or syncopation are, or various other bits of music theory and song-construction, but your mind is absorbing them and learning about them intuitively. So when you hit your thirties you don't have the vocabulary to describe exactly why a new single the kids love doesn't excite you (e.g. "Oh, that's a I-IV-I-V chord progression and a key change one whole tone higher for the last chorus"). But subconsciously your brain recognizes that it's heard that combination of building blocks several times before, only with someone else singing and different effects on the guitars.

I assume the phenomenon has to do with new experiences + hormones + independence.

The double CD ccMixter Brad Sucks remix compilation is finally out! Links: CD 1, CD 2.

ccMixter is a website where artists can upload source files under Creative Commons licenses so that other artists can remix them free of legal worries. Their community has been very kind to me.

Like everything I seem to do, this compilation took way too long to put together but it has somehow struggled its way into daylight.

Thanks of course to all the talented remixers, Magnatune, ccMixter, Victor Stone in particular for his help and Katie Sekelsky for the awesome album art.

This isn't the first remix album for I Don't Know What I'm Doing, but it'll be the last I work on. Other I Don't Know What I'm Doing remix albums that I know of:

• I Don't Know What I'm Doing Remixed
• I Don't Know What I'm Doing Either (MC Jack in the Box vs. Brad Sucks)

I know there are a few other full-album remix projects out there in various states of completion so let me know if I'm missing anything.

Thanks to Scott Lamb of DeathBoy for pointing out that the MP3s of I Don't Know What I'm Doing for oh I don't know, forever, had little glitches at the end of most of the files. They're all fixed now but that was a pretty lame oversight on my part.

1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser.

Ronald Jenkees, YouTube star, keyboard wizard and all-round nice guy has a new album out. He's using my Digital Download Store and that is awesome. Helping artists earn money is pretty satisfying. 

I fixed a few store bugs and installation glitches in the process of helping him set it up so I'll update it soon. Very cool to see people using it.

The White Glove Tracking project is done. I did a few frames a few months ago:

On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt (listed below) is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system. Just as the data was gathered collectively it is our hope that it will be visualized collectively.

There are already some visualizations, very neat stuff.

Quiltsrÿche - Metal quilts. "Bangover" is my favorite.

Scott has some great ideas for Music 2.0 services. I've been meaning to write up mine for a while as I've learned I'm too busy to launch any new sites.

My big idea lately is one I've been meaning to pitch to Magnatune:

Independent record labels should provide hook-ups to their artists for services such as graphic design, manufacturing, merchandise, booking, bio-writing, press kits, photography, advertising, PR and more. These are all things artists will pay for but it's hard to weed through the scams and overpriced poor quality services out there.

The record label would find quality professionals to perform these services at a reasonable price. Record label makes itself valuable to the artists by simplifying their lives, record label takes a cut or referral fee from each service transaction, artist has access to quality resources to improve their career, sells more music, everybody's happy.

June 29, 1888: Handel Oratorio Becomes First Musical Recording - it was called Israel in Egypt and Biblelicious.

The 23 John Henry Bonham Drum Outtakes - I'm not sure how to verify these are actually him, but they're some nice drums regardless.

13 Great moments in the co-option of hip-hop - seems like Run-DMC/Aerosmith "Walk this Way" should be on there, but a lot of great (awful) videos on this list.

SOUNDTRACK - Rob aka thehipcola's new album set to drop October 31st.

Here's a weird one for y'all: Brad Sucks - Tracker Array [10mb MP3]. 

As I've mentioned in a bunch of interviews I took classical guitar lessons when I was 8 or so but got bored of it. It wasn't until I came across trackers on the PC around 1993 that I got hooked on making music (and realized that song files were the future) and it's been downhill ever since. The trackers I spent the most time in were Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker, though I did my time in Composer 669 and Farandole Composer as well.

Recently I came across one of many stashes of tracker files I had converted to MP3 years ago. I thought about putting some of the songs online as a joke -- some of the ideas are okay but the sound quality of the samples is so low it makes me gag. Instead I compiled them into one retro audio highlight reel. These songs are all from around 93-98 I think. You can picture me working in DOS, chatting on BiModem, running a Telegard BBS (Renegade is for lamers) and not getting much sun or healthy social interaction while you listen to this.

So for around two years there I had some awesomely crippling writer's block where I thought I'd never write a song again. It was very melodramatic and retarded and embarrassing to talk about but anti-depressants seem to have fixed me up. Now that my mental health is relatively in check I can start releasing all the crap I decided wasn't good enough during that period without having a heart attack. Here's Tell Me Something I Don't Know from 2004.

There are some things I like about the song, some I don't. The drugs tell me that's OK. :|

LiveAPI is an open-source third-party Ableton Live API, so Ableton Live is now hackable via Python. Create Digital Music has a write-up -- very cool.

Here's my idea: let your audience control cowbell levels of your set via text message. Make millions off of cowbell volume fights. Retire.

What's the perfect song for air guitaring? - a lot of interesting suggestions I never would have considered.

My friend Puce asked me to do a guest-chorus on his Songfight Sidefight entry. And that I did. Here's State of Emergency (mp3).

If you're logged in as a Best Friend Forever, you now get a 10% discount on anything in my Digital Download Store. Hooray!

You can now sign up to be my Best Friend Forever. I don't like the sound of fan club or anything else I could think of, so I figured we could just straight up be BFF via you filling out a simple form. (Note: if you already had a forums account, that's now your BFF account.)

It's free of course. And right now it gets you extra music, access to the forums and a super-badass Brad Sucks BFF identification number. I'm hoping to add automatic discounts for CDs and digital downloads in the next couple of weeks.

For a long time I've been wanting to put more experimental stuff online -- stuff that I don't think would make a great first-impression for the majority of visitors, but maybe some people would like. This should give me a place to put that stuff.

Got this email today from Bebo and it looks like every song except for Borderline has been removed from my Bebo music page:

from: Bebo Service service@noreply.bebo.com to: brad@bradsucks.net date: May 22, 2007 2:48 AM subject: Bebo Bands: Songs Removed for thebradsucks

Brad

Song content was removed for your Bebo Band, Brad Sucks.

Content was removed because it was recognized by the Bebo copyright filter to violate the Bebo Terms of Service:

<http://www.bebo.com/TermsOfUse.jsp>

As a result, the upload songs feature for this band has been disabled. If you believe that a mistake has been made, you can request that your Bebo band page be reviewed:

<http://www.bebo.com/BandReviewRequest.jsp?MemberId=1530240065>

Please don't submit bands that you do not own the copyright to or your band may be deleted all together.

Thanks,

The Beboers

I think it's pretty awesome that I seem to have violated my own copyright somehow. Well done! I'm sure glad my copyrights are safe!!