To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

I've been having a debate with myself and I need some feedback. Recently, the Amazon Kindle received a price drop to $259. When it originally launched it had a price tag of $400, which just seemed like a ridiculous price tag for the Kindle, but now at $259, the portable book reader is much more tempting.

To explain what the Kindle is, as it seems many outside the tech community have no idea what it is, it's a portable book reader. You buy e-books which you upload onto the Kindle and read your books from this tablet computer looking device. Additionally, it has free 3G service built in so that you can browse for books and download them on the fly. Finally, it has integration with my iPhone so the books I buy on the Kindle are available on my iPhone and it all syncs up wirelessly so that if I open the book on my iPhone, I'll be in the same exact place as I was on the Kindle and vice versa. That's important if I feel like reading a chapter on short bus ride but don't want to drag the Kindle out with me. There's a few other bells and whistles, but I don't particularly care for them as much as I care about the ones I've mentioned.

There a few reasons I'm having the debate. On the plus side, it's cool, new tech and that is always enticing to me. The ability to carry this small, thin device around instead of a bulky book is very nice as well. Getting books on the go, without having to stop into the book store, or not having to worry about bringing two books onto the train because I'm almost finished with first, is convenient. And the (generally) $9.99 price tag on even new releases is a great price break for the $20-$35 price tag and brand new hard backs. Also, the clutter that my book collection causes in our house is getting silly at this point.

On the down side, I'm stuck buying books from the Amazon store. They have a huge selection, but some of the smaller publishing houses aren't on board yet, and lots of the books that I can only find at places like Unabridged likely won't be available. Also, I never really buy new releases. I'm the kind of reader that snags books on sale or get the $7.99 paper back version of a book. And it just seems close to silly to not have a physical book in hand, even though the Kindle would be easier to handle than a bound book. I also kind of enjoy showing off my books, even if they clutter up the second bed room.

So I'm left struggling with whether or not the Kindle would be worth it. Sure, I can get digital copies of any book in PDF format and Amazon will upload it for me (for a fee, of course), but do I want to do that. I do kind of enjoy going to the bookstore and browsing. On the same token, I use to adore going to the record store and browsing, but now that I've transitioned to all digital music, I've not missed the store one bit and have even found browsing iTunes and Amazon MP3 even more than physical stores sometimes. That makes me think that the switch to digital books would be similar. But even at $249, the Kindle seems pretty pricy to me.

So what do you think? Is it worth it? Should I just stick to my bound books for now, or should I make the jump to the Kindle?

Oh, and dear FTC: No, I'm not receiving anything free from Amazon to write about their Kindle. Don't fine me. KTHXBAI

Snag Mariah's New Album On The Cheap

For all my loverly 'mos who are in love with Mariah and her crazy-ass antics, you can grab her new album, Memoirs of an imperfect Angel, on Amazon in MP3 form for just $5.99 today only. That's all 21 damn tracks a day early for a great price.

If you've never used Amazon's MP3 delivery service, it's pretty great. You get your tunes almost universally cheaper than on iTunes, and they have a tool that will download the tracks and import them directly to your iTunes, labeled and everything. It's extremely easy. Just click the image at the top of the post (it'll through a few cents my way if you buy), sample the songs if you like, and buy it if you want to support Mariah's Schizophrenia habbit and my blogging habbit!

I'm kind of a fan of hers. I hate to admit it most days, because I'm mostly a rocker boy, but I do enjoy a couple divas from time to time, namely Mariah and Janet. Mariah moreso for her completely bat shit insane antics, but the girl has some chords on her. Checking the samples on this album, it sounds like there's some good stuff there and I'll likely grab it later today when I get home from work.

Sometimes You Make Me Want To Scream

I'm really torn. Chris Cornell released his new CD yesterday, Scream, which would normally fill me with glee. I'm a huge Soundgarden fan and an even bigger fan of Audioslave (both bands fronted by Cornell), so when I heard he had a new album out, I was stoked! But then I heard something else about it: it's produced by Timberland. You know Timberland… he's the producer of practically every hip hop and pop record on the airwaves right now. Yeah, that guy.
So here I am, hopefully for something edgy and rockish, maybe even a throw back to the metal/grunge era Chris Cornell made his fortune from. But then I'm told that the man who is basically responsible for the career of every pop tart on the radio right now is going to be directing the record, and I'm scared. The first thought that ran through my head: OMG, Cornell's selling out! I know, that's very alterna-punk of me to accuse someone of selling out, but what can I do? My second reaction is that this is the meeting that will end the world. Metal and Pop are diametrically opposed, it's a scientific fact, so to see the gods of the respective genres coming together makes me worry for the child of that union.

The album released yesterday and I dutifully downloaded it. It helped that Amazon had it on sale for $2.99 for the whole freaking album! In any case, I sat down to listen, fully prepared for the train wreck. After all, it had to be horrible, why else would they only be charging $3 for it? This would go down with Scott Wieland's 12-Bar Blues as the biggest flop of a major rock star, and it would be intensified by Timberland's involvement. And I was going to be there right from the start to watch it all explode, it was going to be glorious!

But then something happened that I hadn't expected: I actually started to like it. Against all odds, and against everything that is in me, I was enjoying the album. I was experiencing the epitome of cognitive dissonance though: Chris Cornell could not do pop music. Period. It was not within him. He eats Pop stars for breakfast. No wait, he's too fucking good for Pop stars, instead he just feeds them to the dogs and watches with sick glee as they flail for their lives. But here he was, caught in the act, in bed with the Enemy. Even worse, I was enjoying it! To top it off, my boyfriend was liking it. My boyfriend, whom I love dearly, actually enjoys the Pussycat Dolls for their musical ability and wears a Madonna wind breaker on a regular basis, and here he was saying he actually enjoyed the Chris Cornell CD. This couldn't be happening.

I've been listening to the CD all day today, and I mean that in a literal sense. The only time I haven't listened to it was when I was on a conference call and when I was at lunch. I've been trying to find something to honestly hate about it, something to prove that this was a disastrous pairing sure to bring on the coming of the Anti-Christ. But I haven't found any of that. What I have found is an extremely polished pop record with some interesting rock infusion. What I've found is Cornell's pure musicianship finds a way to improve upon Timberland's sharp, addictive beats. What I've found is just about one of the most brilliant pieces of off-the-wall art I've heard in a very long time. And I'm enjoying it, against everything that I hold dear about music.

Scream is a great record, and I recommend everyone grab a copy. It really is brilliant, and when I take it for what it is instead of what I wanted it to be, it comes across as a fan-fucking-tastic hybrid of sound. Make sure to download a copy, I don't think I can recommend this enough.

Only The Newbies Can Top

Call me jaded, call me bitter, call me the sexiest man you've ever encountered… or something close to that. But I've recently taken to getting annoyed with these end of year lists, in particular when it comes to music. I'm a music snob. I have a tendency to like what I like and that's about that. But it's become evident to me that I don't see eye to eye with many editors and reviewers.

Take for example Amazon's Editor's Picks for Top 100 Albums of 2008. The one, and probably only, thing I like about these lists is that I get reminded of a few artists that I still need to check out, but more often I'm reminded that the music industry is overly obsessed with Youth. Gay culture is keen on Youth. The music industry drinks Youth's blood in hopes of staying alive one more day. And I don't mean that they are only targeting young people, I mean that they really only value new artists. Looking at the Top 100, there are only about 20-ish bands/artists that have released more than one album on a major label and/or on a major scale. Out of all of the artists in the world that released new records this year, you mean to tell me that only 20 of the best ones came from veterans? Yeah, I highly doubt that.

New musicians bring new sounds to the market. Sometimes. Most times, it's a variation on a tried and true sound, perfected by an elder artist. Many of the Top 20 on Amazon's list are rehashes of another act, adding just a splash more synth or boring and over-rated Falsetto. A few are ones that I need to check out, like Santagold and Kings of Leon before I can really say much else (truth be told, they sounded decent from the clips, but the others in the top just didn't impress me). I also think labels find it easier to promote a new band, and sales numbers traditionally suggest that an artists first major outing will be their most well-received on the sales floor, but whether that's due to laziness on the label's marketing efforts or actual decline in artistic content is up for debate (ok, who am I kidding, it's usually the damned label's fault).

It just saddens me when really good music goes unnoticed, in particular if goes unnoticed because it's the band third or fourth record. Bands like Unwritten Law and Alanis Morissette released new albums this year, and both were great, but nowhere near the Top 100 according to Amazon. Hell, Ray LaMontagne released his third outing and Brett Dennen his second (still my Album Of The Week… after several weeks…), both amazing efforts, and crap like Duffy hopped onto Amazon's list. It's nice to see a group like Gnarls Barkley get recognition (even if it's at 76), but that's lessened when MGMT grabs a top 10 spot for using an already tired Shoe Gaze sound.

So here's what I say. Grab Alanis' album. Check out Ray LaMontagne. Give Scott Weiland's new solo album a whirl. Hell, give Buckcherry a third chance. But don't just drop these artists by the way side because they're "old news." Their albums have done more to advance music this year than most (not all) of these newbies on Amazon's Top 100, and they've shown that they have some staying power in this apparently Youth-centric industry. New isn't always bad, but honoring new simply because it's new doesn't make much sense if they "old guard" is still putting out better products.