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.