The festival was started in 2002 and has grown to be a well-known music fest and usually features newer, hipper bands rather than huge stadium names. The festival includes 96 bands at the moment, and the coordinators are promising to keep bringing more in as they can. The complete list of bands can be seen on the official site.

Those lucky enough to buy tickets right as they went on sale could buy them first hand for $170 for a three day pass if you bought the first weekend available, then $70 a day after that. Tickets are now selling on Ebay or Craigslist for as much as $600-800 for a three day pass and even $200 for a single day. Other sites, like Stubhub, a popular ticket trading website, have single days between $150-250.

For college students, the festival’s target audience, buying tickets now will be nearly impossible without breaking our already-delicate bank accounts. The large price of tickets will prevent many from seeing bands they usually wouldn’t be able to see, some who rarely come to Seattle or don’t tour often. However this provides an opportunity to make outrageous profits for selling tickets if you managed to get one for a reasonable price.

The Gorillaz have become one of the best known bands of the 21st century, even though they technically don’t exist. Started as a side project between musician Damon Albarn and comic book illustrator Jamie Hewlett, the Gorillaz have blurred the lines between electronic, rock and hip-hop. Fictional characters 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel compose the band in the beautiful music videos animated by Hewlett. The band debuted in 2001 with their album “Gorillaz” featuring the hit Clint Eastwood. Their follow up album from 2005 “Demon Days” continued their advancement as a band and defined their genre mixing abilities even more.

The newest album “Plastic Beach” surely doesn’t disappoint. The CD doesn’t actually hit stores until March 8th, however through a deal with National Public Radio you can listen to the entire album online. In the five year break from “Demon Days” the Gorillaz have been busy, and “Plastic Beach” is one of the most anticipated albums of the year, earning the Gorillaz a headlining spot at the huge Cochella Music Festival.

As with “Demon Days” the CD hosts a large variety of big names, from Mos Def and Snoop Dogg to many other well known artists as well as the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. The CD’s pre-released single “Stylo” features Mos Def and shows how diverse the album is, especially compared to the previous releases. The album feels mellower than the last two albums but is much more experimental and brings the best out of what Albarn can create.

The emphasis on electro beats is often juxtaposed over great hip-hop choruses and lyrical depictions like “Stylo” or the first song after the orchestra opening “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach”, but other times the songs are given a poppy, airy feel like “Empire Ants” which is then followed by the techno-rave sounding “Glitter Freeze.” The album even dips into a soul/R&B tone near the end of the album on “Cloud of Unknowing.”

The Gorillaz real prove their worth with “Plastic Beach” and they set the bar high for the other releases this year, including MGMT’s sophomore release “Congratulations.” The rest of the year’s releases can be found here to see what all is coming up in the near future.

The Academy didn’t select the usual five nominees for best picture but an astounding 10. Does this mean that this year had a lot of highly acclaimed works of film art? Or has this year been so poor for Hollywood that they just need a large number to encourage more viewers? There is speculation either way, but the list it self is enough controversy to argue over.

The full list of nominees is as follows:

• The Hurt Locker
• The Blind Side
• An Education
• Inglorious Basterds
• Precious
• A Serious Man
• Up In the Air
• District 9
• Up
• Avatar

That’s right. Avatar, Up and District 9 are all on the nominees, which certainly surprised me. Disney/Pixar’s Up is the only animated movie to be nominated for best picture since 1991’s Beauty and the Beast. District 9 proved to be a deep, psychological sci-fi film that gained a lot of fans and hype from its advertising and its unique story-line.

My problem with the nominees this year, beyond there being 10 of them, is with James Cameron’s Avatar. I agree very much with my friend Kelton who blogged already about this movie, and I was nearly furious that it won best picture in the Golden Globes, but to be nominated for best picture of the Oscars?! Plus nine other nominations?!

must be a first for a sci-fi movie and for one with such loyal and rabid followers as Avatar. I liked Avatar, the images were spectacular and the CGI amazing. Beyond that, I wasn’t impressed. The story is old, (see: Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, etc…) the acting was sufficient, but not amazing and the writing could have been better.

The key plot piece called “Unobtainium” put me off right when I heard it. No one can say that Cameron couldn’t have changed that word and make the story more believable. I truly believe and know it will win an Oscar for best effects, which it deserves because it did change the game that movies are now playing.

Avatar revolutionized the realm of 3-D movies, but I feel like the judges are seeing amazing effects as cinematography art. The best picture award should go to the most artistic movie of the year, balancing great directing, acting, writing and filming. In my mind Avatar has got filming going for it, but even then, 60 percent of what you see is all CGI and effects.

Moving past Avatar, of the movies I have seen that are nominated, (Up, District 9, Up in Air, Inglorious Basterds, Avatar) I feel a sense of decline in overall quality of the nominees this year. I loved all of those movies, but I really don’t feel like they were up to par with past award winners.

Inglorious Basterds was a great film, I am always a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s style of directing, but I feel the awkward, suspenseful dialogues with Christoph Waltz made the film hard to watch at times, Up in the Air was well written and well acted but felt lacking once it was finished.

All in all, the list of nominees surprised me greatly, making me feel that the Oscar panel was including box-office smashes to fill places on the list. Having not seen half of the movies nominated, I cannot fairly judge if this was a good year for movies, but I do know that whoever wins this year will surely cause debate and talk among movie fans, which is exactly what the Academy Awards are for.

The 2010 Academy Awards will air Sunday March 7 at 8 p.m. central on ABC.

SEAC has offered an opportunity like no other next Friday. They have bought tickets to the Egyptian Theater’s midnight showing of “Ghostbusters” and are giving them away for free to Seattle U students.

I suggest to all who read this, whoever you are, to quickly go out and get a ticket before they are all gone. If you do not you might miss what very well could be one of the last viewings of “Ghostbusters” on a movie screen.

The movie itself is a cult classic and should be seen by pretty much anyone who calls themselves a college student/American. For those of you who have not seen the brilliance of Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver and Harold Ramis in this mid-80s classic you are surely missing out.

“Ghostbusters” is a must see for anyone who, like myself, mercilessly quotes movies like “The Blues Brothers” (possibly the greatest movie of all time; don’t deny it), “Animal House” or Saturday Night Live sketches from the ’70s. Every one knows its theme song and it has become popular enough to have the hip, retro icons of the movie all over Urban Outfitters, therefore you know it has to be cool.

SEAC’s offer gives anyone the chance to see a great movie on the big screen for no cost and to a very close theater. The Egyptian is just a 10-15 minute walk from campus on East Pine Street across from Seattle Central Community College so getting there is no hassle, but transportation is being arranged for better options. Go to the Campus Assistance Center to get your tickets and more information.

However praises be answered! Instead of having to find sites yourself, now you can simply lazily click your interests online and the magical people of Stumble will find websites from around the inter-webs that match what you selected! All without you having to use any of your precious time to find them!

Stumble is filled with categories of interests from cars to geology to music to just about anything (except for really messed up stuff. Probably.). You just sign up for their fun e mail list and pick your interests and you’re all ready to stumble upon the internet!

The first few Stumbles I did immediate made me fall in love with the program because it sent me to everything from the best sunset photograph I have ever seen, to this ridiculous but amazing site. So next time you have some time on your hands and don’t feel like stalking that cute person you’re sorta friends with on Facebook, head over to stumbleupon.com and start finding the real gems.

The horror! Photo by Ramsey Haefner

Imagine if you will: You get out of your room with minutes to spare before your next class starts. You have everything you need, but are running a little late and hope that an elevator will come quickly so you can get to class on time.

Luckily, an elevator comes right away with no one in it and you push the button marked “L”, symbolizing freedom. But, after you hit the button, the doors to the elevator don’t close. It just stays there as you awkwardly stare at the people waiting for an elevator going up. Even after frantically pressing the door close button, it still stays open, until finally, it gives the annoying warning series of beeps and the doors close slower than they ever have. As you finally reach the lobby, having stopped at another floor and having the doors do the same thing, you run to class knowing you will be late and are wondering what cruel twist of fate allowed the elevator to become so slow.

Thus is the mystery that has fallen upon Campion residents for the past two days. The leftmost elevator always stays open until the doors realize they’ve been open too long, then they beep, then they close. This makes using the elevators much slower because no one wants to use this elevator due to the fact that it stays, with its doors open, on any floors it’s called to for around two to three minutes. Already using the elevators can be frustrating, especially living on a high floor where the elevators have to stop on every floor in between on the way up or down.

However, because the stairs are always locked to every floor, one can only go down. So people have to use the elevators going up to their floor, even if it’s just to the second floor. Why they use them going down always amazes me, because it would certainly be faster just to take the stairs.

And now the broken elevator is laughing in our faces. It inspires so much hope, usually because it comes first, but this is just because it endlessly floats up and down, never actually being useful. Once the realization that the happy bing of the elevator is actually the cursed one, morale is crushed, never returning for the rest of the day after being so betrayed. It hurts so much because it is known that once one elevator is at a floor, no other one will come! So once the evilevator (if you don’t mind the horrible, horrible pun) finally closes its doors, any other elevator that might have stopped has already gone by and you’ve missed it.

Hopefully, if there is any mercy in the world, the elevator will stay in one place long enough for someone to fix what ever the problem is.

Elevator #3, I hate you.

From Left: Kelton, Sully, Ian, Bob and Sean. Photo courtesy of Anna Freeman

The up and coming, all freshmen band “Johnstown Flood” played a great 30-minute show last Saturday in the Bistro when they opened for the Portland based duo, the Sound Semantics.

The members of Johnstown Flood are always changing up their instruments, but normally consist of: Sean Clavere on electric guitar and drums, Ian McCutcheon on acoustic guitar and drums, Kelton Sears on accordion, glockenspiel and electric bass, Sullivan Davis on electric bass and acoustic guitar, and Bob Martin on 12 string acoustic guitar and harmonica. All of the members sing and write music, and each member has their own style. In a recent interview with Audrey Shaw on KSUB, they talked about their influences and their musical contributions to the band. After the gig at the Bistro, the band realized they would have to change their name because a band in the UK already took “Johnstown Flood”. So as of yet the band is unsure about their name 

The band played 5 songs, each written by one of its members. They started with Bob’s song, then Ian’s, then Kelton’s, then Sully’s, and finally Sean’s. They played great and, besides a few minor technical issues with the microphones, had an amazing set. The only way the sound could have been better would be to have more professional equipment and to be at a venue with better acoustics.

No matter what they end up changing their names to, formally “Johnstown Flood” is the band to look for in the upcoming months; both on campus and off as they are certainly worth seeing live.

To see and hear the tracks they played, click here

As iTunes grows, so does its Genius recommendations to the user. It started as a way to hear your music gathered into lists that sound similar, then to whole sections of your library, and now they look at applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch. With over 2 billion applications downloaded since their start in July 2008, the app store itself brings in around $1 billion annually to the company by third parties which create these apps and sell them, 70% of the profits go to the third party and Apple only takes 30%. Now Apple uses their Genius technology to give suggestions as to what apps you might like.

All of these features make organizing music, discovering new artists and even buying new applications extremely easy, with no research or even any knowledge of the item you are about to purchase necessary. However is this how we want to learn about new bands? Through a for-profit company that is quickly becoming the leading way to buy music? iTunes is jumping way over the CD business; as CD sales drop substantially each year, iTunes gets more and more gains.

Second, is their piecing music so easily taking the fun out of creating interesting mixes? Why should we now create our own personal master piece playlists when we can click a button and have iTunes do it for us?

iTunes is genius. Even if they are making music too easy, their technology is truly fantastic; how it can pull songs that it might not even recognize and place it with similar songs easily, with little to no mismatched songs.

Photo courtesy of www.appealtoauthority.files.wordpress.com

The Greyhound bus system has created a name for itself as a cheap way to travel from city to city with little to no planing necessary. Greyhound buses are also a key piece in American culture, from its beginning in Hibbing, Minnesota in 1914, to its popular culture references in songs to its reputation as a way for kids run away from home and leave their city for good.

Greyhound has bus routes all around the country, and through a series of transfers, you can pretty get any where in the nation. They are well known for being fairly quick, yet making enough stops to be efficient no matter when you are going

However their system is all ideal.

I recently had an encounter that broke their ideal situation. My girlfriend and I were planing on going to Sedro-Wooley to visit one of her relatives, and we had bought the tickets online for will call pick-up for a bus to Mount Vernon at 3:15 PM. My girlfriend had volunteer work until 1:30, and after she got back we packed up quickly because we were only staying one night, and we got a little caught up in conversation before we started walking to the Greyhound station on Stewart street. When we got there, we were cutting it a little close, and arrived at 3:10, where we saw our bus driver entering the bus we were going to catch. We stopped by the door to tell him that we had tickets to this ride, and that we just needed to run inside and pick them up so we could jump on the bus. The bus driver said no. He simply said he had to leave and he closed the door and drove off. The bus driver refused to wait 5 minutes, when the bus was scheduled to leave, and let us get our tickets. Instead he left 5 minutes early and left us wondering what to do.

Our problems did not stop there. When we went to get a later bus, the next one didn’t leave until 7:10 and that wouldn’t work for us it was too late. Trying to get an exchange to try the trip on a later date, we tried to change the tickets, but they said it would cost $15 a ticket each way to change them, even though the tickets themselves were only $12 originally. And they wouldn’t let us get our money back at all because we didn’t pay extra for the refundable tickets online. So we had to lose the tickets completely.

The companies’ service was awful, and the employees didn’t seem to even pretend that they cared about the customers. The ticket  counter guy was very slow and took the time to talk to his other co-workers instead of helping us right away. The driver of the bus left 5 minutes early, even after we had talked to him and could have theoretically gotten our tickets and been on the bus on time. The entire experience was immensely disappointing and we lost all the money we put in our tickets, because the system they have is flawed. Although Greyhound may seem like a sure way to get where you need, it is riddled with problems that complicate even the simplest trips.

However I have discovered that as strange and seemingly out of context these ads are, there are far worse scales that exist through Facebook. There are now (if there already weren’t) ads that cater directly to a person. A Windows ad that directly thank whoever is logged on, or advertisements that solicit specific places near you, wherever you are logged on, are just some of the random assortment of ads one could find on Facebook.

This personal approach leads me (perhaps as a skeptical conspiracy theorist) that Facebook is pulling personal data from my profile to cater towards my interests! Even if it just a name or a location that shows, who is to stop them from taking more information that you have somewhere on your profile? Although I’m sure there is some kind of protection that Facebook provides, it is still a fairly frightening possibility for someone who doesn’t want his identity stolen.

However what truly sparked this realization in the first place was the ads that occur in Facebook applications. I recently started playing Mafia Wars, and not to write an investigative piece like the work of the Farmville writer, whose work I really do enjoy, but merely out of boredom. As I played, I encountered a similar system to what was in Farmville, however, along with paying real money for points, Mafia Wars has set up with advertisers to give the players incentives to try a product or click a link that the player would have originally thought ridiculous! They offer points for trying Direct TV, for filling out surveys, and other web pop-ups that clutter the Internet as is, however these are twice as appealing because the user gains a small opportunity in the virtual game.

However their fan base is loyal, and even though the band worries their change in name will cost them their current renown, the show almost sold completely out. The first opening band, Phaontogram, opened at around 8:30, who were a New York duo that used a mixture of recordings, synth and guitar, along with the woman’s beautifully aerie voice to produce a poppy electronic sound. The next band, Deelay Ceelay started around 9:30 and consisted simply of two drummers playing together while a recording played electronic/dance music the duo had recorded before. On paper, the band sounds fairly boring live, but Deelay Ceelay had set up a large sheet behind them which they projected a series of strange/visualizer images onto, usually of figures dressed in hoods dancing around and being warped. One of the final songs they played was a cover of T.I’s song, “Whatever You Like” set to dance music which was extremely well done, especially when put to the drummers’ creative and complex drum patterns.

Finally Starf*cker came on around 10:30 and the crowd instantly went wild and packed into the stage room. Starf*cker’s synth based sound inspired a collective dancing in the fans, which escalated quickly into a large mosh pit that violently forced the crowd around the room, sometimes carrying people all around the room. The band jumped right into popular songs like, “Medicine” and “Dance Face 2000,” but stopped right in the middle of the set-list due to technology problems in their speakers, but the problem was fixed quickly and they continued their set right away.

The concert was excellent and Starf*cker really entertained on stage, through their random jumps and antics, along with their bassist and drummer’s cross dressing in dresses and putting makeup on. The Vera project was very nice, even though, being an all-ages venue, there were many kids under 18, and even some under 15.

To see pictures taken from my crappy iPhone camera, click here

The Bistro right after the dinner rush. Photo by Ramsey Haefner.

Although I have only been here for a little over two weeks, I have already discovered just how limiting the Cherry Street Market can be when you’re looking for something specific to eat. The lines are long, and the food is usually expensive. However, it still provides a decent enough supply of options that you can have almost whatever you want. However, it still feels like a cafeteria, as hard as Bon Appetit tries.

The Bistro is just what we need.

The Bistro provides an elegant atmosphere with excellent food that is mostly different from what you can get at C-Street. The pricing is generally equal to C-Street, too. However there are a few things that damage the feelings of perfection at the Bistro.

Every time I have been there at a reasonable time for a dinner meal, there is a line that stretches halfway to Lake Washington. Although this should seem normal given that the Bistro is a food service and a new study shows that 80-90% of all college students need to eat at some point in the day, because the Bistro chefs hand make everything for you once you order it, the line moves slower than a snail covered in molasses on the bottom of a very frozen lake (it must be very frozen, otherwise the metaphor just doesn’t work).

Next is the music. There has never been a time that I have entered the Bistro, or even stayed in the Bistro long enough to hear a song that I just can’t stand. Most of the time though, I can’t even hear the song properly. The reason is that 70% of the time the CD that is playing skips so furiously that the song is unlistenable. The other day  a part to a song that I’m pretty sure was supposed to be one minute skipped so many times it was playing for over 10 minutes. Although the CD playing should ruin any time there, it is generally quiet enough not to destroy anyone’s hearing or breed any insanity within the diners themselves, surely a disappointment to the fine people at Bon Appetit.

Despite these discrepancies in the service, I truly do enjoy the Bistro for what it is, and I find myself choosing it over C-Street almost every time. I love the hand made  quality and I honestly feel more full on a $6.95 pizza than almost any one item in C-Street. That coupled with having our own freakin’ awesome coffee house all-in-one leads me to be proud of what we have and to brag about our food service to all of my other non-SU friends.

Enter Mojo, the free open-source software that allows users to share any song or un-protected file on iTunes with any other person on their network. Once Mojo is opened, the user can view every other iTunes library from other people with Mojo open, and download songs almost instantly. This newly downloaded song is just as if you ripped the CD straight to your own computer, and can be used on an iPod or any other device or for any other use.

Mojo's setup looks just like iTunes, but gray songs are already owned and red songs are protected and cannot be played

Mojo raises new questions about sharing. Is it ok to download copies of songs from people who may have at one time purchased the music? Is this any better than a torrent site just because it is in a local network?

Mojo follows every law and protocol that protects songs, and is much easier to use than any other way to get music from library to library. Should we as fans of this music feel ok about taking hundreds of songs without paying for any of them? Is it any worse than burning a CD for a friend?

People using Mojo love it, because you can get that one last CD you never had the time or money to buy yourself and you can learn about new musicians that you might support in the future. But you are still taking music without paying for any of it. However the moral issues of not paying for music are all up to the user themselves.

Pearl Jam is one of the last remaining Seattle rock groups from the early 90s that have made music consistently since their creation. While bands like Nirvana or Alice in Chains have faded in and out, Pearl Jam has continued to write new music in their same style, and Backspacer is no exception.

Backspacer is Pearl Jam’s latest work, following 2006’s Pearl Jam and following a new trend in the music industry: selling exclusively through a major retail store before it can be bought anywhere else. Backspacer was sold through Target retail stores nation wide starting on September 20th, and was available everywhere else on the 22nd.

On to the music. The album’s single ‘The Fixer’ is a great example of the album and really shows their style off excellently. The album swings right into Pearl Jam’s signature distorted guitar and Eddie Vedder’s swinging, raspy vocals. Halfway through, the CD takes a different turn and switches to a much more intimate feel and slows down for a song or two before returning to the grunge feel.

However, there is nothing really new to this CD, and nothing that really distinguishes this from the rest of Pearl Jam’s earlier CDs. Vedder and crew still sing their opinions toward politics and their own feelings, however the album feels more empty and redundant than the earlier CDs. A few songs stand out from the rest, and its not at all to say there is no substance to this album, but the vocals seem disinteresting and out of date for the kind of music to be expected from a band with such a long history. It’s a little disappointing to hear this CD sound so similar to the preceding CD, Pearl Jam, especially since it took the band three years to release it, but it’s still enjoyable. Pearl Jam has stuck to their roots and skill set and truly delivered what they can deliver best: a hard rocking album that tells us they still can write like they did almost 20 years ago.

Review score: 6/10

Click here to view the embedded video.