I picked this CD up last night with much anticipation and listened to it today on a long drive. 

It started strong, quickly soared to awesome, and then made a meteoric descent to absolutely awful and only recovered marginally after that point.  *sigh* Too bad.  I admit, that by track 3 I was beginning to wonder if we had another Ray of Light on our hands.  Things stumbled a little in the fourth track but came back strong for tracks five and six.

Then came track 7--the inexplicably named song Incredible.  The only incredible thing about this song is that it came from Madonna.  I'm sorry to say it is the worst song she's ever created.  Dischordant, screwy pacing, strange change-ups, and just an all around mess.  This one song utterly destroyed the mood and made it hard for the album to come back, which wasn't helped by the fact that the next 3 songs were mediocre at best.  I have no interest in hearing any of them again.  Madge, you can do better.

The mixing on tracks 9 and 10 was also pretty poor.  Madonna's voice was often drowned out or subdued against the music.  I understand it's supposed to be dance music but her voice is way too strong to be so downplayed.

Track 10 was the best of the mediocre songs, but Spanish Lesson is no La Isla Bonita... far more cheesy and contrived.  I may listen to Spanish Lesson again... I have a feeling it might grow on me.

Thankfully, the tail end of the album was saved by track 11 The Devil Wouldn't Recognize You, definitely an awesome number that I'll be putting on my new MP3 player whenever I can afford to buy one.

Track 12 Voices had a good sound but pretty silly lyrics.  I got the impression Madonna was trying to do a sort of "haunting" piece, like perhaps Frozen--but the lyrics were too weak for me to enjoy it.

Obviously I hold Madonna to a pretty high standard, let's face it--7 good songs on a 12-song album makes it a good album.  And this really is a good album--in fact if it had been an 11-song album minus Incredible, I probably would have enjoyed the later tracks more.

So here's what I recommend to people who buy this album and who loved Ray of Light and Confessions on a Dance Floor.  Listen to the tracks in this order:

2. 4 Minutes
3. Give It 2 Me
6. She's Not Me
5. Miles Away
1. Candy Shop
4. Heartbeat
11. Devil Wouldn't Recognize You

After that, stop and leave the other tracks until your next listen.  And I recommend just skipping Incredible forever.

Hard Candy is an awesome album.  It is almost another Ray of Light, and once again Madonna rocked my world.  Get the album and dance your ass off.

---

EDIT: After several more listens I have to say this album seems increasingly more kickass.  There's no hope for track 7, and track 10 doesn't stand up to a second listen, but track 8 Beat Goes On was much better than I originally thought.  On a second listen I enjoyed it much more and I think the first time through I was just so disappointed by Incredible that when the next song came on I was already soured on the experience.  So add track 8 to my list of good tracks above.  I'm going to be listening to this album constantly for awhile... and "4 Minutes" is frigging huge.

Here's a funny animation I caught on Pharyngula, the excellent science blog by P.Z. Myers.  The audio is German, but there are subtitles.  I got a kick out of it, perhaps you will too?

Das Rad

Kicks ass.

Weird video though.

So it's been awhile since I've posted a summary of the indie music I am listening to. As you know I follow 3Hive, GigaTracks, and also Obscure Sound to find out about new small independent bands and get some of their music. I check these sources every few months and backtrack through the posts to see if there is anything good. Usually, I like very little of what I hear, and that which I do like is merely "passable".

Well this time I waited over six months, and let me tell you my favorite source (3Hive) has been positively dry... dry dry dry. But even when it's dry you can usually find a few things, and some of these are quite fun. There's been a dearth of kickass dance music lately though, and I would say only one song in this list (Duality by The Martial Arts) qualifies as a song you could dance to.

Anyway, I've got most of this stuff on a mix disc and I'm listening to it in the car these days to get a feel for which bands I might want to purchase a CD from. There's definitely a couple I would like to hear more from. Anyway, throw on your headphones and have a listen... I don't think anything here will knock your socks off (there's no Afroganics or Aviatics in this bunch) but you may find something you like here.

1. Christine Fellows
    
   3Hive describes Fellows as "Experimental Pop"--but I'd simply describe this as thoughtful acoustic music. The only song available via 3Hive is "Advice" which is a beautiful piece advising young people not to be in a great hurry to find love, or at least to "give themselves away". I find it quite pleasant.
    
   • Advice
    
2. Club 8
    
   I have a soft spot for Swedish bands, but I would love this duo even if they weren't Swedes. Lovely soft-pop with lots of acoustics and simple vocals that you can sing along with. It isn't dance music… in fact, it's Christian music. Strange that an atheist would enjoy Christian music? It's just words folks, and I can sing them and enjoy them without believing them. Maybe you can too.
    
   • Jesus, Walk With Me
   • Heaven -- I particularly like this one… very happy.
   • Spring Came, Rain Fell
   • What Shall We Do Next? -- Less acoustic, more poppy.
    
3. Colour Revolt
    
   This band from the deep American south makes a good attempt at wailing guitar rock with "Naked and Red". It's also a bit of a refresher after the happy spirituality of Club 8. The song opens with a line about God swinging from the "licker tree" and it only gets weirder from there but ties up its interesting message with the idea that "Eden is a hell of a place." I'm glad somebody noticed!
    
   • Naked and Red
    
4. Elk City
    
   I seem to be on a spiritual kick lately, because Elk City also serves up a religious offering with "Los Cruzados" (The Crusaders) -- I'm a sucker for a good hallelujah chorus, and Los Cruzados delivers. 3Hive has another song by them available which I didn't enjoy but you may. Check them out.
    
   • Los Cruzados -- Hallelujah… hallelujah… my wife heard me singing some of these Christian/spritual songs and asked "Are you having second thoughts?" Hee hee hee.
    
5. Empty Rooms
    
   Sombre and haunting, I'm not sure how to characterize this rock band. In some ways they remind me of Duran Duran, and in some ways they remind me of The Fixx, but their sound is definitely their own. I'm linking two songs here, there's a third on 3Hive that I didn't particularly enjoy.
    
   • Off with His Head
   • Try Again
    
6. Hasch'm'Méneum
    
   Is it electronica or jazz? It makes me tap my toes and rock my head whatever it is. Unfortunately some of the available tracks seem to cut a little short… probably because the band wants you to buy their CD… well I'm considering doing just that. If you like chirpy electronica with a comical side to it, this may be the blurps and bleeps for you. There are no vocals, or at least no lyrics... it's all instrumental.
    
   • Christerium -- This song is a little funny. Something about it makes me smile. Sadly it is cut short.
   • Heliotrope -- This piece is more meandering and contemplative… it would make great background music to read to or engage in some other mental activity.
   • Red Sniper -- Stronger rhythm track and a hint of some sort of illicit activity going on in the mood of the music. This would make a good movie soundtrack for a montage where a character is putting his evil plan into action.
   • Slide -- Probably my favorite song by Hasch'm'Méneum, this one is goofy and fun. It's another one that makes me tap my toes. Alas it is also cut short. :-(
    
7. The Heavy Circles
    
   I have to see if I can find some more music by the Heavy Circles. This pop piece definitely sticks in my head and includes some great whirling sound.
    
   • Henri
    
8. The Hermit
    
   Some songs are background music, some songs are dance music, some songs you sing along with, and some you just want to close your eyes and slowly rock from side to side. "Wonderment" is onesuch with its sweeping poppy electronic sound and gently echoing vocals.
    
   • Wonderment (Affekt remix)
   • Flutterbye (Sputnichek remix) -- Faster paced than wonderment.
    
9. The High Water Marks
    
   Squelchy retro guitar beach music... at least that's what it feels like to me. 3Hive has three of their songs up. The only one I've included here is "The Leaves" although I felt that "Queen of Verlaine" was passable.
    
   • The Leaves
    
10. The Martial Arts
     
    Okay, this is another group I need to find more music by. This is great summer music--even beach music perhaps. Music you can sing along with and even dance to, which makes it a little unusual because this latest 3Hive dump doesn't include much in the way of dance music.
     
    • Duality -- Probably my favorite song of all the songs listed here today.
     
11. Oslo
     
    This is darker stuff. Sometimes when you are disgusted with the state of the world, it's cathartic to listen to something dark--or at least therapeutic. Rise and Fall of Love and Hate is about divisiveness and how we are taught to be divisive. Sure touches a nerve with me, because I am fed up with all the demonizing I see going on these days.
     
    • The Rise and Fall of Love and Hate
     
12. Sittser
     
    If 3Hive has been dry, GigaTracks has been postively barren, but this one piece makes up for all that. It sounds like of a great 80's guitar ballad.
     
    • Losing My Fear of Heights
     
13. Sneaky
     
    So if you took Indian music and set it to a funk track and built in a solid driving whorling drone and a lot of repetition you would probably get a hypnotic piece just like this one. Excellent driving music this. I dig it. Purely instrumental.
     
    • Beduija
     
14. Spitzer
     
    Okay, I was iffy on including this piece by the French group "Spitzer". This is definitely electronic, like Trash80-style electronic. No vocals and very very synthy, but it has a good beat and it gets the head bobbing and the fingers tapping. Give it a listen... come on... you know you can't pass up a song called DISCO BISCUITS.
     
    • Disco Biscuits
     
15. Wojtek Godzisz
     
    I'm not sure what to make of this artist. 3Hive refers to this as "theatrical pop" which as good a way as any to describe it. They listed three songs but this was the only one I enjoyed.
     
    • Light Over Dark Earth

Hope you enjoyed at least some of these... I'll keep trolling the intertubes for good indie music... check back in 3 months!! :-P

---

Definition of "undercutting":

Me:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120163294055
Starting time: Sep-27-07 19:45:00 PDT (scheduled, so as to begin after other auctions ended)
Starting bid: US $49.99
Duration: 7-day listing

The other guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170153862318
Starting time: Sep-27-07 20:27:48 PDT
Starting bid: US $0.89
Duration: 7-day listing

I've been so busy with work and trying to sell cards that I haven't had time to do much photography.  I did get some great pix in Hyannis a couple weeks ago and some more good stuff at a reception for a christening I went to last weekend, but I haven't had time to photoshop the photos, clean them up, organize them, and so forth.  It's just been either work or eBay the last couple weeks.  Here's one picture I took (at the office, of couse).  Somebody in my building went out and got one of those "Dream Cruisers".  Isn't it gorgeous?  Wow.

On the eBay front I continue to sell and sell.  Part of my unlimited set is gone now, and I've gotten the right price for it, and I continue to identify rarities or obscurities in my collection and put them up for sale.  I am happy to report that I am at 90% of stage one and expect to make it there by the end of the week.  Cool beans!

But I have learned one important lesson about selling.  Selling in bulk may allow you to ship more product, but it definitely costs you money.  I sold a set of 8 revised dual lands back on the tenth of September for $122.50.  In preparation for the end of that auction I got another 7 dual lands together and was prepared to sell them as a batch.  But I decided not to.  As an experiment I decided to sell the 7 duals as individual auctions (here they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).  They went for a total of $139.60.

Sold as a batch, they went for $15.31 apiece.  Sold individually? $19.94.  That's 30% difference!!!  Viewed from that perspective it makes sense to sell individually unless you have a very small market (say you are selling on a table on your front lawn... maybe a couple dozen people swing by and look at the items, chances of selling them all individually are remote.)  But on eBay the market is huge, millions of potential buyers, so go for it right?

Well there *are* the eBay fees to consider.  eBay will charge you for absolutely anything you can think of and plenty of things that wouldn't even occur to you.  Back in the early days of eBay there was a listing fee and a sale fee.  The listing fee used to be 30 cents.  That was it.  Then if the item sold there was a sale fee which was this sliding scale thing that was very complicated but generally worked out to about 4% to 5% of your sale.  Nowadays everything costs money.  No longer is the listing fee flat, but it is based on the minimum bid of your auction.  If your minimum bid is a dollar, the listing fee is 20 cents.  If your minimum bid is $49.99 your listing fee is $1.20, and if your minimum bid is $59.99 the fee is $2.40.  As you can see the fee is determined inside some sort of bracketed structure.  Want to add a reserve price?  You'll be charged 1% of your reserve price.  Want to add a buy-it-now price?  There's a fee for that.  Want to schedule your auction to start later in the day or later in the week?  There's a fee for that.  And so on and so on and so on.  Sale fees aside, eBay takes a hefty chunk out of you up front just for listing the item.  To the point where it makes no sense at all to sell anything for under say, 5 dollars.  Ebay will simply eat so much of it that it becomes pointless to sell it.

And of course once your item sells, eBay charges you for a percentage of the sale price, this you would pay no matter how many items you are selling, but the listing fees are paid for each item.  My listing fees for the first dual land auction was 30 cents (I had no minimum bid, no buy it now).  The 7 individual auctions cost 40 cents apiece to list (probably because I set a minimum bid of $9.99, otherwise it would have been 30 cents).  But that is $2.80 to list 7 individual items instead of 30 cents to list one.

Then come the PayPal fees, which generally work out to about 3.5% of the sale price but which have overhead costs causing them to be at least 30 cents as a minimum.  I read an amusing story about a guy who overcharged his customer about 90 cents for shipping, and offered the customer a refund via PayPal.  So the customer got sixty cents.  Ouch.  For items worth about $20 each, the overhead is not really all that relevant, but it would be for inexpensive items.  The PayPal fees would be easier to stomach if PayPal wasn't owned by eBay.  Yes, that's right, you pay eBay to list your item, you pay eBay to sell your item, and you pay eBay to collect the payment for the sale of your item.  Yeesh.  And, to make it even more annoying, PayPal fees are instantaneously applied to any cash transferred, but eBay fees are simply billed to you at the end of the month.  That way, PayPal can charge you a percentage off of the $100 you were paid, instead of the $100 you were paid minus the eBay listing and sale fees.  I hasten to point out again that PayPal *is* eBay.  Double dipping anyone?

After correcting for eBay listing fees, eBay sale fees, and eBay PayPal fees, the group lot went for $14.20 per card, and the individual lot for $17.80.  That's still a 25% improvement in price, even after being robbed charged for eBay's fine services.  Altogether the 8 auctions sold for $262.10, which isn't bad, even if eBay took $23.92 in total fees.  My state government charges 5% in sales tax.  eBay?  9.13%.  Yikes!!!

So from now on I'm going to sell individually and try not to think about the fact that I might as well just set every tenth item on fire since I'm not going to end up with any money for it.

Looking down the notes/status on my selling/sold auctions, they read like something out of "How to be Obnoxious -- A Practitioner's Guide".  Let's run through them, shall we?

Item 1 is a very rare set which did not sell because some rather clueless sellers all decided to run auctions for the same item at the same time as mine, and undercut me.  As a result they all hurt each other and nobody made what the set was worth.  One guy had an extremely low minimum bid and got no bids.  After his auction ended, there was only one auction left to bid on, it shot way up over the first guy's minimum despite having poorer quality cards.  Thinking about that makes my brain shrivel.  Now I have to wait around for all of these shmoes to finish relisting and selling their sets so I can get a fair price for mine.  And they appear to be waiting for me.  Greaaaaaaat.

Item 2 is my most valuable set, wouldn't sell for 80% of the retail price.  I received the most ridiculous offers, promises from people who then disappeared, and got strung along by people who eventually just backed out as if surprised when I repeated stuff to them which was clearly stated in the auction description.  Meanwhile the auction has had hundreds of views and dozens of people watching it.  I've now relisted (cha-ching! extra ebay fees!) lowered the price to 70% and it still isn't selling.  Jesus.  I'm going to have to split it up and sell it in pieces (cha-ching! more fees!)... and I'll end up making way more than the current asking price.  Had one buyer offer the full price if I would ship to Spain (auction says shipping to USA only.)  He assured me up and down that it was perfectly safe and he does it all the time.  Then I told him that he would have to assume the shipping risk (i.e. item goes missing, he has to wait for the UPS refund, up to 6 months).  And suddenly it's no longer something he feels comfortable doing.  (Guess he doesn't have as much faith in the Spanish courier services after all.)  Currently I have one offer from a guy who "is trying to get the money together".  We'll see... past history is not a good indicator.

Item 3, a set so rare that only a handful exist in the world.  I set a reserve and have people who expect me to sell it to them for one tenth of the reserve.  One bidder offered to buy it for the reserve price, but insists I cancel the auction and relist it with a buy it now option first!!  (For those wondering, it cost about $9 to list it the first time, and would cost another $9 to list it again.)  Guy refuses to just bid the goddamned reserve amount.  I refused to end the auction for him.

Item 4, fixed price/best offer auction.  I accepted an offer of $150, only to discover that the buyer was from Japan (you don't get buyer's location until you accept their offer.)  Auction description says shipping to USA only.  Genius.  I recalculating the shipping charges, and they tripled.  Sent buyer an invoice and pointed out that he should have contacted me first before he bid because that's exactly what the auction description says.  I hope he doesn't back out, but I suspect he will (and I lose $5 in listing fees... cha-ching!)

Item 5, sold Aug-31.  No contact from buyer.  Invoice sent 9/1.  Reminder sent 9/4.  Still no contact.  Standard eBay grace period is 3 days from end of auction.  Going to have to send buyer a warning tomorrow and if he doesn't pay within a day after that it will be negative feedback and relist the item (cha-ching! more listing fees...)

Item 6, shipping to USA only.  Bidder from Germany pleaded with me to ship to him, and eventually I agreed and let him bid.  Then after winning the item he argued with me about the shipping costs and insisted I ship USPS instead of UPS.

Item 7, buyer asked repeatedly about card condition despite pictures of the cards being in auction description, and then took his sweet time getting his payment together after he won (took 5 days to make an instant electronic payment.)  At least he apologized for taking so long.  He'd be the first.

What next???