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  Read more…

With the update of iTunes 8.0, a new feature was added called Genius. Genius took a note from the popular internet site, Pandora, which creates free set lists of songs that sound similar based on various aspects of the songs. However Genius playlists use the iTunes library to organize songs, rather than bring new ones that might sound similar. Genius corrects this simple drawback by suggesting songs that could be purchased that might be close to the selected song. In iTunes 9.0, iTunes added another version of the Genius feature, Genius mixes, which are like full radio stations dedicated to certain genres in your library that shuffle randomly to whatever songs are at all similar to the genre itself.

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.

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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.

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