It really is a mixtape, too. It has two sides and each is less than 30 minutes, so you could theoretically copy them onto a cassette… you know, if you had one… uh, and a device you could use to record onto it. Let’s be honest, this is going straight into iTunes.

Side A – Out with the Old (download)

The first half is a mix of tracks of my own that I happened to have laying around from the last two years or so. Maybe you’ve heard them, maybe you haven’t. Either way, I had to do something with them because I’d like to move past them and they’re in the way. Sedate and serene, this mix hovers around 120bpm.

Side B – In with the New (download)

Two-thousand eight is already full of hope. The topics range from personal endeavors to national politics to global challenges but, regardless, my hope that the year sounds something like this. Mercilessly bouncy, I have a hard time not dancing to these songs. None of them are mine, but they represent a sound I’m interested in (especially Rex the Dog, he’s so dreamy). Consider it a statement of intention at an effervescent 130bpm.

I’ve decided against attaching a track listing of the second mix, for fear that roving Googlebots will discover I’m giving away free music and notify The Man. Email me if you positively must know a track.

Switching to Blueprint has left the Stanifesto design with some rough edges… look for that and many more things to be resolved in 2008. Official “Resolutions” to come!

Perhaps I’m overgeneralizing. To be more specific, what has always bothered me is her vocals on “Hips Don’t Lie“. They’re too loud for the rest of the song. She overpowers the trumpet, the drums, even Wyclef—with whom she’s supposedly dueting. Even when she’s soft (because her fantastically expressive singing does occasionally make use of a wide dynamic range), she’s still louder than other tracks at their peak. Each time I’d hear the song, it drove me closer to crazy.

I had always attributed it to human error. A difficult explanation, as I’m sure Shakira spends more paying people to keep her pants extra-shiny than I do on my entire music studio (I dabble). Clearly she’d have the best studio engineers that money could buy. I as at a dead end. Then I signed up for Zipcar.

Zipcar is only a minor player in the plot to unravel the Shakira Code, but getting me back in the driver’s seat (I haven’t owned a car for years) exposed me to something that had been missing in my life. Radio. I literally do not own a radio. All of my music comes from the internet. Once in a while I’ll go to Amoeba to see what other people are into, but radio had disappeared completely.

In a car, with no access to my beloved internet, I was adrift. Wait? What was that my friend Brant had said? Something about a channel that plays all Hyphy-Reggaeton mash-ups? Yes, “La Kalle“… what was the frequency? I desperately hit scan and trusted my rented Toyota Matrix to come through for me.

What I found was a version of “Hips Don’t Lie” that I had never heard before. It had trumpets, accordians, latin percussion, and Shakira’s vocals were correctly mixed! I realized, with a start, that I was probably hearing the original version and that the one I had been exposed to for so long was the White People Version.

It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened. When an artist records a song, it’s normally embellished with a great manner of assorted accompaniment, only some of which make it to the “final mix”. I can recall how Amy Grant, when she first broke out of the Christian Country category and into Adult Contemporary with her songs “Baby, Baby” and (not her song) “Big Yellow Taxi“, had to remove all slide guitars from the mix. They were simply too country for non-country radio stations. She sent different versions to different stations and shot up the charts.

No doubt Shakira does something similar with her songs. Actually, it’s probably Shakira’s label that does it—I have a hard time seeing Shakira in the studio saying, “Can we turn down the accordian on this part, I don’t want people to think I’m Mexican!” That seems a little low.

Sarah, with whom I now live in the heart of San Francisco’s Spanish-speaking Mission District, has been a Shakira fan since back before she bleached her hair and started singing in English. We’ve often discussed the gentrification of ethnic music, though I have yet to engage her on my Chocolate Umbrella mash-up (which I consider the marriage of two songs deeply laden with troubling yet compelling messages about race). I was very happy that my sharp ear managed to contribute something in the on-going “Has Shakira sold out?” question, though I’m not sure which side it supports. It’s clear that the White People Version was just an after-thought (though wildly more popular) and some studio engineer couldn’t be bothered to pull the slider on her vocals down 2dB so it would sound right. Way to stick it to The Man, by driving him slowly crazy (see above).

Download “Chopscotch” here.

What I’m going for… well, I’ve been listening to a lot of Apparat and Squarepusher lately. But honestly, I’m trying to recover the musicality that my music had back in high school, while holding on to the closer attention to timbre of my later stuff.

Comments like, “Ooh! I like it!” or “Ick. WTF?” are well and good, something like, “I don’t like the hi-hats… too synthy.” or “The drums get boring after a while.” are much more useful. That said, feedback of all sorts is welcome.

From the first words, “Corrupt/You’re corrupt/Bring corruption to all that you touch” softly sung like the beginning narration to an epic story, British rockers Muse introduce a theme running through their entire latest album.

The radical pose is definitely struck. Activists marching in black-and-white and slow-motion protesters wracked with passion fill the enormous video screens behind singer Matt Bellamy as he belts out “During the struggle they will pull us down/But please, please let’s use this chance to turn things around.” (The video for “Invincible”, available on their website, is filled with similar imagery.)

A certifiably catchy blend of all things Britrock, Muse can sound like Radiohead, Queen, and Led Zeppelin all in the same song. Three great tastes that taste great together, it’s difficult not to sing along or bang your head (as appropriate) when called upon to do so. In this way, I was reminded more than once of Third Reich marches; when the man on stage, clearly cooler than you with his custom Manson guitar with built in Kaoss pad is screaming, “War is overdue/The time has come for you/To shoot your leaders down/Join forces underground,” you kinda want to do it right then and there.

Closing your eyes and listening to the lyrics alone would suggest you’re attending a Rage Against the Machine show, but Muse is shiny, modern, and articulate (almost to the point of over-processed) compared to the raw, dirty, but “authentic” guys from Rage (whom you wouldn’t be surprised to run into while dumpstering some ramen). Rage, who’s classic eponymous album served as the twixt-set music at the Muse concert, looks like radicals. Muse looks like glam rockers. Who exactly is adopting the radical pose and who is content with radical ends?

Bellamy’s beliefs go deeper than the studio. His uncle was killed by the IRA, which has forced him to examine terrorism, its root causes, and how its used by governments to further their own causes. He’s publicly offered strong criticism of Project for the New American Century (bringing it up in interviews) and worn a shirt promoting projects of Alex Jones (no relation) on stage.

During the third song of the second encore my attention drifted to two drunken and half-naked girls merrily dancing around one another while only 100 feet away, in full Queen-like three part harmony, Muse proclaimed, “No one’s going to take me alive/The time has come to make things right!” before launching into thrashing metal ending complete with lasers, pyrotechnics, 10-foot wide balloons bursting into glitter, and jets of fog firing in all directions. The celebration seemed out-of-sync with the message, but walking home—ears ringing—I couldn’t help but feel invigorated to kick more ass.

What follows, after the necessary introductions, are direct quotes from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in last week’s Newsweek interview and the recently released “Thoughts on Music“, respectively. I admit a slight bias may have come up during editing.

Steve: Hello, I’m a Mac.

Bill: And I’m a PC.

Steve: There are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands.

Bill: I don’t think the over 90 percent of the population who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards.

Steve: Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players.

Bill: There’s tons of people who help make those decisions, so I wouldn’t overstate my role in the past… I don’t know why Apple is acting like it’s superior.

Steve: Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats… This is clearly the best alternative for consumers.

Bill: That’s for my customers to decide.

Steve: Any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets.

Bill: It’s totally according to plan, and that’s why we have the whole Windows Update thing.

Steve: Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering—

Bill: If you just want to say, “Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along,” that’s fine.

Steve: Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.