Posts Tagged ‘spin

29
Aug
12

How The Tiger Unlocks The Power Of The Interwebs

UntitledVodacom are doing a sick campaign at the moment where they’re asking SA’s top bloggers and influencers to share the secrets of how they unlock the power of the internet.

Naturally they called up your buddy ol’ pal Slicky-T, because it’s a well-documented fact that I’ve been unlocking the power of the interwebs since the mid-90s yo.

Back then, the internet was a joke. The information published on most websites was notoriously unreliable, pages took days to load and downloading a 10MB file would have probably taken at least three hours.

Still though, I can’t tell you how many times I listened to the dial-up tone of my 56k modem in eager anticipation as I trawled the internet for free guitar tabs, walkthroughs for games I was stuck on or dodgey free games sites.

 

 

There was just this feeling back then that we weren’t even scratching the surface of what the internet was capable of. It was the Wild West, before the social media revolution, just huge tracts of untamed super-highway.

Anyway, I digest. The real purpose of this piece is to give you guys a little insight into what I’ve learned over the past 15 odd years on the interwebs, specifically when it comes to finding new music and bands because it’s something I think I’ve gotten down to a fine art.

Firstly, I’ll hit you guys with a few of the music site links I hit on a regular basis to stay in touch with what’s going down in the music world.

To any hipster readers out there, lemme just warn you in advance: these sites are totes mainstream ok? If that has you feeling a little awks, just light up a Gauloises, jump on your fixie and go bitch to your friends at the vinyl store about what a philistine SlickTiger is.

Great. Now that that’s out the way, here are my top 6 music sites:

www.spin.com (there is a player on the top of the screen with a sneaky red down arrow. Hit that arrow to stream entire new albums for free)

 

www.rollingstone.com

 

www.nme.com (killer album reviews)

 

www.pitchfork.com

 

www.spinner.com (also great for streaming new full albums, even if most of them are so weird I’m not sure if they can be classified as music…)

 

www.stereogum.com

 

www.npr.org (hit the “Music” link on this site, then scroll down and hit the “First Listen” link on the right. Again, you can stream a lot of new albums for free here and NPR ALWAYS get the albums before they’re released)

 

www.texxandthecity.com (and how could I not mention my favourite local music site. Texx is a total badass, this is THE site for local music news)

 

 

So that’s pretty much where I get my music fix on the ol’ interwebs.

I tell everyone who wants to get into new bands and music the same thing – as with most things in life, with new music on the interwebs the 80/20 rule applies.

In other words, 80% of what you’ll find on all those sites is a load of horse dung. Even if you give those tracks and albums a few listens, they will remain utterly shite in every way. Do not let that deter you.

I say this because that last 20% will be pure gold. They will be songs and albums that you will listen to for the rest of your life and it won’t be the same old, lame old regurgitated left overs everyone else listens to.

They will be songs and albums that mean something to you and the people you care about and when you play those albums in years to come, they will always remind you of the moment in your life when you discovered them for the first time.

 

 

It has been and continues to be a powerful belief of mine that music will save us. No other art form that I’ve come across can capture raw emotion so perfectly and communicate it with such eloquence.

Never give up on finding new music. Never fall into the trap of listening to the same bands hundreds of times over until their music is so familiar it almost means nothing to you.

Move on. Change. Adapt. Leave that old music in the past, where it belongs, and choose a new soundtrack for your life before the audience watching dies of boredom.

 

 

So that’s one of the ways I unlock the power of the internet boys and girls, but stay tuned next week because your buddy Slick may or may not have a little competition up his sleeve that will definitely help you unlock the power of the internet as well.

Later Party People Winking smile

-ST

19
Aug
10

SlickTiger puts on his journalist hat, gets to work

Something you might not know about your Tiger pal is that there was a time when he had his sights set on becoming a journalist, no shit.

I even went through the motions of studying a degree in journalism and everything, but in the end the dark side won me over with promises of regular working hours and a much better salary and so I became a Sith Lord of spin instead.

 

 

So it was pretty hilarious when Nokia invited me in my capacity as a blogger to check out the new Nokia N8 at the Grand Daddy Hotel on Longstreet. I kinda felt obliged to go because the kind folks at Nokia’s PR company hooked me up with the badass X6 I’m currently rocking so fair’s fair right?

I wish you guys could have been there, it was so funny. I walk upstairs to Daddy Cool’s (15 minutes late for the demo, just like a REAL journalist) and everyone’s like “Hi SlickTiger! How are ya! Klap gym boet! Hahahaha!”

And I’m like “Hahahaha!”

And they’re like “Hahahaha!"

And I’m thinking, Is that buffet I smell…?

And they’re thinking, This douche better give us a good write up or that X6 is comin’ STRAIGHT back…

Then I meet the guy giving me the demo and he introduces himself but I’m not really paying attention because right behind him, I shit you not, is a FUCKING AMAZING BUFFET!

 

 

I’m talking wraps, mini wraps, kebabs, you name it! More delicious noms than you could shake a stick at, all laid out neatly on a table for me and me alone.

“Please, do help yourself,” Demo-man said, smiling.

Huh, these Nokia people are nice, I thought to myself, chomping through a steak wrap. Being a journalist is sick!

“So,” Demo-man says, “tell us about the people who read your site.”

“Oh yeah, the people who read my site, well, um, they’re not your average consumer y’know?” I said in my important-sounding voice, “They’re better than that. They read my site because they don’t buy into the load of crap that other sites try sell them, they want to read something an actual human writes. They’re pretty cool that way, um…”

“And age wise?”

“Twenties, early thirties, around there.” I’d like to thank the Academy.

“Ok, and have you yourself had any experience using a Nokia phone?”

“Yes, he has the one we gave him, the X6,” the friendly lady who greeted me confirmed.

Uh oh, I thought. She’s subtly referencing the X6… quick! Say something that won’t make them take it away!

“Amazing phone!” I affirmed with gusto, “The touch-screen technology is just, amazing! Unfortunately I don’t have it on me at this exact moment I er, left it on the toilet at home this morning.”

“You know, studies show that a high percentage of people actually tweet and check emails on the toilet,” Friendly-lady said.

Great, I thought to myself, Now she thinks I’m one of those people. Siff.

“Anyway, if you’ll turn your attention to the screen in front of you we can begin the demo,” Demo-man said.

From there on in I made an earnest effort to take in and mentally record everything that Demo-man showed me. I then mentally archived this information, deleting some of the porn in my brain to make room, and cleverly filed it for later reference.

So, here’s what I got:

 

 

Luckily the good folks at Nokia gave us press packs on seriously slick memory sticks so that I can actually substantiate this otherwise meandering tale of utter crap with some solid facts about the N8, after which I’ll sum up neatly with another whisky and my overall impression of this phone.

Check, check, check it out yo:

 

  • This phone has a 12 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA. That’s 12 motherbitches, as in after 11, before 13? Which means the pictures it takes are guaranteed to fuck your shit up the INSTANT you see them
  • It also has an HDMI output which means you can plug the phone directly into your sweet 52-inch LCD TV just like Demo-guy did for me and pull up all your pics and movies and they look so amazingly crisp and clear you’ll probably pop wood instantly
  • You get maps. Bam! No fucking around. Maps for 70 countries worldwide and it won’t cost you a goddamn cent
  • You can download apps, not thousands and thousands like on an iPhone, but give it a year and I reckon there’ll be a decent selection. What’s cool about the N8 though is that if you buy apps, they get billed to your service provider and added to your monthly bill. No dicking around entering your credit card info for jerkwad pirates to steal on the interweb
  • The music you buy on the phone through the Ovi store isn’t DRMed up the wazoo and can easily be stored and played however the hell you want, unlike the ‘Comes With Music’ music that sends a homing missile to your house the second you try give the music you’ve bought to your buddies
  • Everything is flippin’ integrated with everything. Don’t grill me on the details here, but the phone’s built for ‘social media addicts’ so yeah. Think of it as a crack pipe for Twit-heads, Face-boobs and Blog-jammers
  • It looks pretty slick. Take a gander:

 

 

Final verdict is I went to the demo to mooch some free food and came out actually impressed with what I saw so yeah, go out and buy everyone you know one of these, they’re gonna sell for R5 500, pre-orders start 27th September.

I’ll be getting one in early September to review so you can expect a follow up where I’ll give you guys the real low-down as to whether this is amazing as Demo-guy made it out to be.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just have to go rinse the taste or corporate dick out of my mouth and we can resume broadcasting as usual 😉

-ST