Ladies, Gents, Avies, I dearly apologise, this is a shameless RL linklove plug. Y’all see, rather unplanned - Facebook relationship reminded me of it - I went to a kickass little festival in my old home town yesterday. Ok, to be honest, I can’t even judge it to be kickass, as I arrived late, and saw only one band. But that band swept me off my feet out of my boots*: Quantum Fantay was full of awesomenes! With a daring mixture of rock, psy, electro, trance, metal and folk - and whisperings of ‘this is _so_ like Ozric Tentacles - they were a pleasure to listen to and - bass player had the kewlest shape & skin ever - look at.

Finding it hard to describe just how wonderful their sound was, I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I suggest you go listen for your self, either on Quantum Fantay’s official website or on their - I know, but just for once - MySpace. See, Belgium does not just have great beer & chocolate, but also friggin’ awesome sounds.

As usual, I got the dress code all wrong. Woops. :D

Tags: music, quantum fantay, real life
Categories: Music
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A few weeks back the three first price winners of the Koinup WindLight Contest were announced. Today they were celebrated in world with a live performance of Jax Streeter and an exhibition of their photographs and 7 ‘honourable mentionings’ at the Rezzable ‘Cannery’.

Seeing there works on display in the virtual world was sure as hell impressive, and so was the music and the guests… Miss Ravenelle and Mister Torley ‘Linden’ Olmstead. Woot! I must admit, this was the first time for me to see Torley IRL.. euhm.. IVL and I was kinda stuttering. First thing Torley said to me? ‘Is that a watermelon drink you’re holding?’ :p

Jax Streeter gave the best of his virtual self and played one hell of a set - with ‘Avatar Superstar’ as my favourite song. As promised, I bumped the song 9 times on TheSixtyOne.com and gave Mr. Streeter my underwear layer. He has at least one new fan after this gig! /me hums: ‘No matter where you’re from. No matter who you are. In this world… you are… superstar… avatar. Play like you are. Act like you are. Rezz like a superstar, avatar!‘

More photographs of the exhibition opening in the Koinup Windlight Exhibition Opening Flickr set. For those curious: All photographs except the one of Torley Olmstead were shot with the ‘Pirate’ WindLight Preset.

The winning entries and 7 nominees for the Koinup Windlight Contest will still be on display in-world for a few week, so if you missed the opening, you can still go and see them. Correction, you should still go and see them! Directions: Open your map and search for ‘Cannery’ (or click this SLURL), upon arrival at the Cannery sim, you’ll see a big sign saying ‘Koinup & Rezzable’. Click the TP disk located under it, and we’ll get you right to where you need to be… but you won’t hear a live concert of Mr. Streeter.

PS. A certain Miss Mira owns me bandages for my poor little sour paws. Never ever give me a lighter before telling me to detach it when I plan on typing! ;)

Mr. Jax Streeter performing ‘Avatar Superstar’:

Tags: cannery, contest, jax streeter, koinup, music, rezzable, torley linden, windlight
Categories: Art, Contests, Music, Photography, Rezzable
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I first stumbled over Bob Ricci at thesixtyone.com, listening to his ‘depressive rock song‘. A steady rock song, about an artist that wants to write a depressive rock song, but has the huge problem, that everything in his life is ok, and he has no depressing story to tell. It’s _hilarious_. As a bonus, the riff sounds indeed very nice - he sings ‘it would be such a pitty to waist this riff’ - and he can actually sing.

One of his more recent song creations is ‘Photoshop‘: an ode to the power good knowledge of Photoshop gives you. Please sing along with me (and fill in the blanks that I could not understand):

I used to be the biggest loser, I never could do anything right. I wet the bed until I was 14. Could never hold my own in a fight. But suddenly everything got changed. My whole life story rearranged. And all my friends they think that I’m deranged, but they don’t understand the godly powers that I gained.

I have got Photoshop, and I just can’t stop: I just copy, paste and I drag and drop. And everything in my life seems so much better! Like this girl I date, thinks I’m 28, little does she know that I’m ????. And she even thinks I’m certified to forecast the weather.

Hilarious, no? Also very agreeable are ‘Unhackable on the tones of ‘You are Beautiful’ and ‘an Internet Love Song‘.

Thank God for The 61! ;) (And see, I don’t bump only Second Life artists! ;)

And for the photoshop-nerds reading this, what was the most evil thing you ever did as it came to ‘forgery’? Or what was your best attempt at doing something evil with photoshop-forgery? With me it was a few report cards (used), messing with friend’s photographs (used) and a fake bank transfer paper: changing the bank account number where the money for a 1 week not obligatory school trip should be transferred to, before handing it to the parents. Anyway, we never used that. The conscience - and fear to get caught - timely kicked in.

Tags: bob ricci, parody, photoshop, thesixtyone.com
Categories: Music, Photoshop
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If you heart Trance, you should have heard from the Alienhearts already. This France based trio creates awesome electronic dance music and can often be found performing in Second Life. They have now released their first Second Life Music Video, The Little Newbie.

Also nice to check out is their ‘NooB Episode 01′ Pilot, which features lot’s of confused noobs and a dancing cow in the lead role…

The Alienhearts’ homebase is - of course - alienhearts.com.

Tags: alienhearts, machinima, music, video
Categories: Music, Second Life
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Get It Together is a collaborative recording created by musicians who regularly stream live shows into SL. Conceived and written by UK singer songwriter Djai Skjellerup the recording features the talents of the following musicians; Toby Lancaster, Zak Claxton, Norris Shepherd, BabbleGrabble Swindlehurst, Rich Desoto, Jambalaya Fonck, Lyn Carlberg, Kim Seifert, Jean Munro, the Professor, Freestar Tammas and Mimi Carpenter.

To be freely distributed throughout all live music venues and other sites in SL, the purpose of Get It Together is to raise the awareness of live music amoungst SL residents. Rumours go the launch party was a blast.

More information about the 13 different musicians participating on Mr. Desoto’s website. Where do we go to bump the song? ;)

Tags: get it together, music
Categories: Music
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Now we all know about TheSixtyOne.com’s Second Life community it’s time to look at who’s on there, how they are ‘received’ by the average human 61 users and the best… which amazing in-world live music schedule has sprung out of this.

Linkage to SL artists on the 61:

Dolmere Talamasca has written out a nice overview of all Second Life artists currently on TheSixtyOne.com, including links to their profiles. If you are a member of The 61 and did not hear yet of the organised 61 bump bombs to encourage and support SL artists, I suggest you IM him and say ‘Hi. I want to bump!’ If you are not a member yet, and want to join, I kindly suggest you list me as a referrer. That way, I automatically subscribe to you - seeing what music you like and what you think worthy of bumping - and I get more points to bump SL artists. Well, frankly, I bump any song I like. Latest giddy discovery: Miranda Rensch - I like making Faces.

Second Life avatars, whatyathink?

Apparently, not all what is 61 ‘diggs’ Second Life avatars on ‘their’ website. On MaxBumps for instance, they think ‘What do you think of Second Life Avatars for musicians and users?’ is one of the 10 things you should really know about your fellow 61′ers. *sighs* Some funny, stupid and enervating responses to that question after the break.

*****************************************
100th 61 Bump Bomp Party starting today at 8 AM
*****************************************

Some of the highly insightful reactions of fellow 61′ers:

I don’t think about them very much - I find the variety of avatars on t61 fun and interesting, so too much of any one kind gets boring. I mean, if three dozen people chose adorable hedgepigs as their avatars, that’d get boring too, no matter how adorable they were. OK, maybe four dozen. (Iyzie)

Is that what those avatars are? I had no idea. I guess they’re alright. It kind of takes the humanity out of the interaction aspect of the site, but then again if it wasn’t Second Life avatars, it would be random pictures, so I guess as long as they feel it portrays their personalities, it works for me. (KeithWarrensEa…)

Those avatars inspired me to make a podcast dedicated to their work. Apparently T61 has a pretty large group of Second Life players … and who am I to judge? I’ve got the artistic abilities of a doorstop. (PuntSpeedChunk…)

The whole Second Life concept creeps me out personally, but people can pick whatever avatars they want. (Shayborg)

Now, really does this need to be an issue? Off to the interesting part… PARTYING! ;)

61 Bump Group and Get It Together Party

Today there is an enormous and amazing musical line up dedicated to ‘The 61 Bump Group’ and the ‘Get it Together’ song. The ‘Get it Together’ song? That’s a musical cooperation between different artists to raise awaress about the splendid work some of the free in-world musical locations are doing. A sort of ‘thank you, for getting us heard’:

Get It Together is a collaborative recording created by musicians who regularly stream live shows into SL. Conceived and written by UK singer songwriter Djai Skjellerup the recording features the talents of the following musicians; Toby Lancaster, Zak Claxton, Norris Shepherd, BabbleGrabble Swindlehurst, Rich Desoto, Jambalaya Fonck, Lyn Carlberg, Kim Seifert, Jean Munro, the Professor, Freestar Tammas and Mimi Carpenter. To be freely distributed throughout all live music venues and other sites in SL, the purpose of Get It Together is to raise the awareness of live music amoungst SL residents.

Update: listen to the song here.

But I’m sure you will find out all about it - and get a listen - at the party location, which is at Bree Berke’s ‘Nitida Ridge’.

The Party Schedule for today:

08.00am Kourosh Eusebio
09.00am Beth Odets (FishFryBingo on 61)
10.00am JueL Resistance (Suzen JueL on 61)
10.30am Leslee McCarey
11.00am Neil Morrison (Spinning Mule on 61)
12.00pm Mel Cheeky (Melanie Fudge and Mel Cheeky Collabs on 61)

Get It Together Launch Party Artist Schedule
1.00pm Zak Claxton (61 holdout, only one of the day)
1.30pm Rich Desoto (Rich Palmer on 61)
2.00pm Lyn Carlberg
2.30pm Mimi Carpenter
3.00pm Kim Seifert (Kim Robben/Seifert on 61)
3.30pm Djai Skjellerup and Toby Lancaster
4.00pm Premiere of “Get It Together”

4.30pm the Professor
5.00pm Von Johin
6.00pm Closing act (A special three way relay event! Mimi Carpenter will be live at Nitida Ridge for the 61 bump party with a special mid-set treat. Mimi will be joined by her bandmates Dolmere Talamasca and Max Kleene. As an added bonus Dol will remain at his show on SoHo island and Max will remain at his show at the Bellagio. All three audiences on all three separate sims will be able to listen in to this special relaycast event!)

Photographs with this blogpost are of Dolmere Talamasca performing at the Second Life Relay for Life event. It has cost me dearly - 5k l$ donated to SLRFL - but he said it… twice! And there was even an unsollicited added ‘… and neko’ part. Yeey! :D

Tags: get it together, music, thesixtyone.com
Categories: Music
1 Comment »

Whomever thinks the Second Life community limits itself to forming groups in-world is severely mistaken: the Second Life group on Flickr counts 5,591 members. Those 5,591 are mostly what I refer to as ‘avatar accounts’: profile photographs are those of the Second Life avatar, the member name is often that of the avatar, bio-information is that of the avatar, and content produced is by the avatar… with some help of the puppeteer, of course. Sometimes ‘first life’ information is given out, but that is more an exception than reality. Networks like this also exist on Facebook (mine is quite confusingly for all parties, mixing SL and RL friens and family), MySpace, LiveJournal, Blogger and blogs in general - Zoe keeps track of over 500, but I would estimate their number to +- 1500, the least. And now it seems the SL community has ‘flash mobbed’ theSixtyOne.com: in a few days time, the number of ‘avatar accounts’ on theSixtyOne.com has become numerous.

What is theSixtyOne.com

TheSixtyOne.com is a music sharing service, where a bump is equivalent to a vote of confidence. Listeners bump songs they like as a way to express their love for it. They support AmazonMP3. A ‘buy’ button will appear on songs available on this service. No further ‘reward’ for artists scoring well is in place yet. Although there ‘level’ system does allows this. No integration with Facebook, … yet and no ‘musical map’, nothing learning from your preferences, yet. But it definitely has room to grow.

How does this ‘flash mob’ happen?

Standard networking. ;) I still like to believe we have a very creative community in Second Life. If there is anything appreciated, it it self-created content: be it builds, music, SL photographs, fashion, … . As within any community, you have tremendiously popular content creators, and sooner or later one of those joins theSixtyOne.com. That artist tells it to his or her friends, who then join the community service to vote - bump in this case - the artist’s work.

Eg.

Claudia Mantis IM - instant messages - Vint F.: Go and bump Nephie’s ass on thesixtyone.com.
Vint: Nephie’s ass? Will do!
*Vint joins the thesixtyone.com and starts bumping Nephie’s songs.*
*Vint browses some other Second Life ‘avatar accounts’ on SixtyOne, finds other SL musicians - already familiar or not - and bumps those too.*
(Mimi Carpenter, Raspbury, BabbleGrabble, Rich Palmer, Jeff Wyatt, Grace McDunnough, The Professor, DJ Doubledown, Jeremy ‘Frogg’ Works (Frogg Marlowe), …)

Other (Second Life) musicians will see those artists doing great on theSixtyOne, following their leads and joing TheSixtyOne.com too. Second Life fans will tell their friends to join, vote for their favourites, Second Life promo channels - mainly Group Notices - are used by the artists to go and vote, they link to their profiles from already existing ‘Avatar accounts’ on other community services, etc… . And the ball - or ‘avatar account’ growth - goes rolling. Impressive to watch.

On Flickr, the Flickr community was rather discontent with all those ’screenshots’ taken suddenly appearing in between their ‘real’ photographs and illustrations. On TheSixtyOne.com the blending seems to go naturally, with ‘avatar accounts’ bumping RL musicians and RL accounts bumping music that is posted by avatar accounts. Because there the content - music - is exactly the same for both worlds: there is nothing that distinguishes music made by a ‘virtual person’ from the RL equivalent. Both versions still needs a RL voice, RL sounds - be it electronically produced or not - and a RL sence of keeping tone. ;)

‘Influencial musical persona’

Funny is that you see a lot of Second Life’s ‘influencal’ persona regarding music re-appearing onTheSixtyOne.com, also there having a lot of influence: Crap Mariner, Dolmere Talamasca, Grace McDunnough, Sally Silvera, … .

Why use ‘avatar accounts’ and not their RL persona?

That’s an easy one: they alreay have their networks that are linked to their avatars - Flickr, blogs, in-world groups, … - they only need to ‘export’ those links to TheSixtyOne.com. If I would join up there with my RL name, hardly anybody would recognize me. Signing in with ‘Vint Falken’, it’s ‘Hi Vint, nice to see you’ all over the place.

Best new songs discovered by browsing

Rich Palmer - No Copy, No Mod (No Woman, No Cry parody, awesomly fun!)

The Professor - Looking for a CEO (Funny critic on the recent announcement that Linden Lab is looking for a new CEO.)

Jeremy ‘Froggs’ Works - Ain’t no woman (in SL) (Yeah, I do appreciate SL parody songs. ;))

Which SL musicians are on TheSixtyOne.com

If you hup over to Dolmere Talamasca’s profile and take a look at his playlist (below left corner) you get a nice idea which SL music artists are already to be found on TheSixtyOne.com: Astrin Few, BabbleGrabble, Beth Odets, Blues Heron, Bolug Frog, Charles Coleman, Cylindrian Rutabaga, DJ DoubleDown, Distilled1 Rush, EffinJ, Fable Sinatra, Fender Barbosa, Filthy Fluno, Forsythe Whitfield, Freestar Tammas, Frogg Marlowe, Grace McDunnough, Hali Heron, Hugh Dench, Jaycatt Nico, JooZz, JueL Resistance, Kaklick Martin, Kim Seifert, Kourosh Eusebio, Lyn Carlberg, Lyndon Heart, Mel Cheeky, Melvin Took, NANCE Brody, Neil Morrison, Nephie Eerie, Paisley Beebe, Pato Milo, Rain Vieria, Rich Desoto, SRV4U Conacher, Slim Warrior, Soundcircel Flanagan, Spence Wilder, TallGuy Kidd, Tallan White, Tette Merio, The Professor, Toby Lancaster, Virtual Live Band, Von Johin, Zaphod Theas, eyewall Paine, foxyflwr CureSLer. Yikes, that’s a lot, no? ;)

Tags: music, second life, second life community, social networking, thesixtyone.com
Categories: Music, Second Life
8 Comments »

An average day at Vint’s place:

Vint: ‘Mr. Feedreader, why did you not show me this earlier, useless piece of ****?!’
Feedreader: ‘Well, euh… I did not think you would be interested. Really. You did not feed me any feed that contains this. And euhm… you have no smart feed titled music.’
Vint: ‘Lame excuse. Really, you should have somehow known this was about Second Life.’
Feedreader: ‘But, I did not even know that it existed! There was no way I could know about this.’
Vint: ‘A big mouth now?! That’s it. No updates for you for a week! Not even important ones!’
Feedreader: ‘That’s not fair! Finding good stuff is not in my job description! I only filter information you tell me to filter!’
Vint: ‘Hush! Do I still hear you?’
Feedreader: ‘New blogpost from DesignMeltdown.‘
Vint: *ctrl+alt+del*

Did I really need to make such a fuss about missing a Second Life Parody of ‘I wanna be rockstar’ by Nickelback? Yep! Why so? Well, the lyrics are awesome and the singing is way better than I could ever do. But that’s not the main reason. Ever seen Mr. Foolish in-world? Always in a neat suit, looking all brushed up and resembling a 19th century aristocrat more than a virtual worlds pioneer? Well, I knew he could do many things. Probably almost everything there is to do in Virtual Worlds & Second Life. Excellent one-person sculptie sleeping bags amongst others. But I’d never, never, ever expected him to do this:

Just one question: What’s an ‘Elbow Room’?

Full lyrics and get the MP3 at Rezzable’s Avatar page.

Did I say LMPAO already? *sings ‘I’ll need a SexGen bed With every move - And enough sexballs To keep my groove - Gettin every X-cite bit That’s ever been made for me‘*

Tags: avatar, foolish frost, parody, rezzable
Categories: Music, Second Life
5 Comments »

Ak Yip at SLrank watch set the tone with these ‘Linden Calling’ lyrics:

Linden calling to the faraway SIMs
Now that regulation is declared-and VAT come down

Linden calling to the virtual world
Come out of the Real Life, all you boys and girls

Mind that I fall in? Let’s pretend I can write lyrics and sing. *grins*

Linden calling, now don’t look at WoW
World of Warcraft has bitten the dust
Linden calling, see we ain’t got no lag
‘cept for on popular sims, but please, let me brag!

CHORUS
The metaverse is coming, alt+0 is zooming in
Meltdown expected, the scaling is growing thin
Clients stop running, but I have no fear
Cause Linden is drowning, but if needed we’ll find a way to out of here!

Still 3 verses left for those who want to give butchering the Clash’s lyrics for London Calling a try themselves!

Tags: linden calling, music, parody
Categories: Laughter, Music
1 Comment »

Just for the record here, Mr. Dolmere Talamasca - über skeleton - just performed ‘Closer’ by Nine Inch Nails and - only once, but still - sang ‘You bring me closer to God!‘

Some fan-humor during the gig:
[17:25] Vint Falken throws her underwear layer at Dolmere.

Short reasoning why I say he isn’t singing about the God-god here:

1. Reznor sings ‘… help me get away.’ Praying or God does not help much. At least the solution I understand here gets you off this planet for a few seconds.
2. ‘… just as an animal’ which would not be combinable with the idea of God, as christian God does stand for a separation of soul and body (darned Greeks!) so, it has to be the other solution.
3. The rest of the song is full with references to sex, so why shouldn’t this part be too? :d

La petite morte uber alles! ;) *on the tone of California über Alles*

Btw. In French, death is as it should be, female!

Tags: dolmere talamasca, live music, music
Categories: Music
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