And another interview ...

There is an old interview with the band at KEXP.ORG that's worth checking out. Normally its just Mark so it's nice to hear the whole band talking. You can listen to each song separately or hear the whole interview and songs in one go.

Tour Starts ...

Marks solo tour started last night at University of Cadiz, Algeciras. First reports say that he came on before the support act and left the stage after about 20 minutes never to return. Hopefully its just a one off but his shows have been a bit erratic recently.

More news as it happens.

AMC Videos

Having a browse round iFilm and i see they have a couple of American Music Club promo videos up there. There is the amusing Karaoke version of "Johnny Mathis' Feet" and the rather buff, tanned video for "Wish The World Away". I remember seeing an old one for "Electric Light" recently, but have lost the URL. Anyone else out there got it?

What we need is an comprehensive AMC DVD gather all these videos up and make em available. Possibly with some decent live footage as well.

The Comic Strip Presents ...

Here are a couple of Eitzel and AMC related comic strips I found, courtesy of ConcertLiveWire.Com. They seem to run a comic strip taking the mickey out of rock and pop acts. The Bad Religion one is quite good.

Another Interview

Here is another interview from 2006. It is by a site called Vox.Com which is presumably nothing to do with the old music mag of the same name.

I, Curmudgeon (2004)

In an attempt to avoid stereotyping, it seems Mark appeared in a documentary a couple of years ago, all about being miserable. It had a relatively all star cast for something like this. I have never heard of it or seen it advertised anywhere.

New Tuatara Track

Looks like the new Tuatara album is available for streaming from the record companies site. By the sound of it Marks track is "A Spark In The Wind". It has a bit of an eastern drone rock sort of vibe to it.

Photos

It seems a few of the users of the photo web site Flickr are fans of Mark as well. Here are a selection of photos of the man himself. What a selection of shirts and hats he has.

Podcasting

Here is a cool Podcast interview with Mark that goes into the history of the band and his thoughts on music and the world on general. They also have a good video of the American Music Club playing "I've been a mess" in Brooklyn. From the good people at CultureCatch

Mark on new Tuatara album

It seems Mark is contributing to the new album by Tuatara, the side project of Pete Buck from REM and Scott McCaughey (when they are not being the Minus 5/3). It seems they put together a bunch of tunes and sent them out to their favourite singer/songwriters, Mark included, to write and sing on.

"East Of The Sun" is due out in June 2007 and there is talk of taking the band and the singers hitting the road. We will have to wait and see whether they come to the UK.

This is also mentioned in the April issue of Uncut on page 24.

Undertow Orchestra

When Mark toured with the Undertow Orchestra they seem to have got quite a bit of publicity.

Glide Magazine have an interview with all the band members.

There is another interview with them and a couple of songs on Minnesota Public Radio.

There is also what looks like a video of a show in Athens, Ga.

There are a coule of YouTube posts but nothing with Mark on it really.
Will

Vic

Will


Finally there are a couple of recordings around. There was a nice piece and a complete show up on (the realllly good) Bradley's Almanac. Unfortunately he has taken the tunes down now but I am sure they are still around somewhere. Further searching shows It's Hard To Find A Friend also has another whole show. I went to the Union Chapel gig which was one of the best shows of last year. Anyone out there have a copy?

Enjoy.

Music Club Recordings

A quick trawl of the net reveals you can get some American Music Club goodness from the Internet Archive. Only one show from 2005 but probably worth checking out.

It's also worth remembering there is the FREE version of Everclear on Download.Com.

Have I missed any more?

Mark On YouTube

It seems there is quite a bit of Mark on good old YouTube.

Jenny


Johnny Mathis Feet


Sleeping Beauty


Doing An Advert


Meets My Bloody Valentine - Incidental One

I remember hearing this on a "Red Hot and Blue" compilation when it came out and thinking "erm ... where's Mark?".

Mark Eitzel Touring

It seems Mark is touring again next month. Here are the dates so far announced.

28.3 Algeciras - University of Cadiz
29.3 Sevilla - South Pop Festival
30.3 Barcelona - Pocket Club
31.3 Madrid - Sala
8.4. Halle (Saale) - Objekt 5
9.4. Nurenberg - Jazzstudio
10.4. Münster - Gleiss 22
11.4. Bremen - Kioto Lagerhaus
12.4. Stuttgart - Laboratorium
13.4. Munchen - Zerwirk MUSIKEXPRESS Party
15.4. Vienna -Chelsea
16.4 Zagreb - Teatre & TD
17.4 Innsbruck - Weekender
18.4 Aberdeen - Lemon Tree
21.4 Exeter -The Phoenix
22.4 Cardiff - Clwb Ifor Bach
23.4. Wolverampton - Lil Civic
24.4. London - Luminiare
29.4. Norwich - Arts Centre
30.4. Cambridge Junction
4.5 Cork - Cyprus Ave
5.5 Kilkenny - Roots Festval
6.5 Kilkenny - Roots Festival

In related news, he has also demoed at least 8 tunes for his forthcoming musical project.

The beat of a different DRM

As mentioned earlier, I have an iPod. On it I have ripped pretty much all of my favourite CDs and a few other bits that I have liberated off the net. Have I brought anything from iTunes? A couple of things, but nothing that I wouldn't mind losing if I ever switched back to a non Apple player. You see, anything you buy from iTunes is encoded with Digital Rights Management (DRM) in such a way that you can only play it on YOUR ipod or your copy of iTunes. Considering there are hundreds of makes of MP3 player out there, this is a bit of a limitation. Especially now that Microsoft have launched the Zune media player. Music purchased from the Microsoft site will play on the Zune but not on the iPod.

So what has caused this stupid state of affairs? Its because the digital music revolution has been lead by the hardware manufacturers up till now. In the old days someone would invent the tape cassette or the CD player and all the music companies would agree to use it. The phrase download is a bit misleading as there are so many sorts. An itunes download would be more equivalent to an Apple CD that could only be played in an Apple CD player. The only thing it shares with an MP3 is that they are both stored as computer files.

There is one simple solution to this whole saga though. That is for the music companies to come up with their own format. This would have all the features of Apples FairPlay but would be licensed to M$, Apple, iRiver and anyone else who wanted it. I am sure it wouldn't take long to come up with some encrypted version of an MP3 file. Then, as long as the manufacturers stuck to the rules you could play the tunes you downloaded from itunes on your Zune and vice versa. I mean, how hard can it be to create a new audio processing codec? I am sure for a fee apple would license the algorithms behind FairPlay. Wrap that round an MP3 file and you are ready to go. Of course Sony has tried something like this. They came up with their ATRAC file format which you could only download from the Sony site and that only played on Sony players. Therefore trying to copy Apple but failing miserably (of course naming your new technology after the old 8 track technology didn't help).

The other thing about DRM is that people say its too restrictive. How many places do you need your music though? Your PC, your laptop and your music player should be enough. M$ have given us the ability to "lend" music to friends for a bit. If you buy a CD you can only really play it in one place at any one time. You could burn a copy for the car and a copy for the office, but who does that? Also, as long as the new system worked with all the various subscription services as well they would have it all tied up. Then digital music would really take off in a big way.

Mark Eitzel goes musical

Mark Eitzel likes Brighton (the one in the UK). The American Music Club have played there a couple of times and he has appeared solo a couple of times. In fact he likes it so much he's writing a musical about it.

I saw him when he played the town over xmas as was suprised when he announced this. He played two of the songs from it and they sounded really good. One was set in Lower Rock Gardens which is in the shady part of town. From what I remember, it was about a woman who possibly had a difficut childhood and was possibly on the game. The other was more of an anthem for the town. There was some lyric about blokes in jeans and white t-shirts. The chorus was something about spending "another year in Brighton", though I can't remember if it was meant in a good or bad way.

What I hate about iPods & iTunes

I have probably had my (5.5G 80Gb) iPod about 6 months now, so its probably a good time to review what I like and don't like about it.

Likes

• Integration with iTunes. As a complete package its great. Having put most of my collection on there now (several hundred CDs and the same amount of "backups") it has opened up a whole new way of listening to music.
• Smart Playlists are cool and so is the ability to mark a Cd as a compilation. It keeps the list of Artists a bit cleaner.
• Video and games are quite fun if you have 20 mins to kill on a train journey. I wouldn't watch a whole film on it though.
• Podcasts. There are some really good ones on there.
• Nice long battery life.

Dislikes

• As Apple is in league with the record companies, why couldn't it get its track names from them as well instead of going to that CDDB thing. Windows Media Player nearly always came back with the right disc and track names. Give iTunes a 2 disc set though and it will come back with two similar but distinctly different disc names.
• Inability of iTunes to play an album or artist without keeping the music pane open at all times. If you continue browsing through your music then it just plays the current song and finishes.
• The way the iTunes Music pane always goes to the top of the artists list whenever you switch to it, instead of keeping your last selection. Very annoying.
• Might just be my MacBook but the Cd is very flakey. Often it will freeze mid rip and the only way to eject it is a reboot.
• Misc hardware fault which returns error -48 and requires you to have your MacBook set to a West Coast US timezone in order to sync with your iPod.


• More than £20 for the optional power adaptor. I got one from Amazon for £2.50.


• The fact that the audiobooks and one single that i have brought can only be played on an iPod or in iTunes.

I had a iRiver H340 and while it was a nice bit of kit they assumed that just the ability to play music was all that was needed.