The Parlotones Vid!

Greetings from the Blogosphere!

Here's a blog of firsts: The first video of the first US appearance of The Parlotones.



Enjoy it!

-- Blogmonaut

Saturday Night With The Parlotones & Pickled Beat

This past Saturday night at Lulu's was another not-to-be-missed gig! The Parlotones delivered a fantastic set of their award-winning music (courtesy Pickled Beat's gear -- thanks again, guys!). Then Pickled Beat kept everyone rocking for two sets of energetic covers.

Check back soon for a link to the photos. And next time get your butt down to Lulu's to check out the bands!

-- Mary

From South Africa to South by South West

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Godfrey Palaia
917.843.5520
bookinglulus@gmail.com

ALL THE WAY FROM SOUTH AFRICA

The Parlotones Play Lulu’s in Port Jefferson This Saturday

The Parlotones are kind of a big deal in South Africa -- and they’re about to become a big deal all over the world. If you need proof, just check out their sound at myspace.com/theparlotones. Between their gigs at SXSW and a late-March tour of the UK, the band is making its only New York appearance at Lulu’s Village Pub in Port Jefferson this Saturday, March 14, at 9 PM. The band is sharing a stage with local classic rock band Pickled Beat. The Parlotones have steadily grown from a local indie band in Johannesburg, to South Africa’s top-selling rock act, with Fujufilm tapping their song “Beautiful” for a commercial.

The Parlotones are the top-selling rock act in South Africa and have received the South African Music Awards (SAMA) Best Rock Album in 2006 for their cd Radiocontrolledrobot, Best Band at the You Awards in 2007, FHM Readers Choice Award in 2007 and Best Music Act at the People’s Choice Awards in 2008. The band is touring in support of their latest CD A World Next Door To Yours, which is available at Amazon.com.

For more information on The Parlotones: www.parlotones.co.za, www.theparlotones.co.uk, www.myspace.com/theparlotones

For more information on Lulu’s Village Pub: www.luluslive.com

Music Is Dead: Thanks Apple!

One of the reasons that I'm involved passionately with the production of live musical performances is that music is such an important factor in the cultural fabric of our humanity. At the expense of sounding like a Luddite, I have lamented often the fact that most people these days get their music fix in the form of overly processed and compressed digital formats. Never mind that most do not flock to live performance venues for their musical experiences, but choose, almost exclusively to have their music delivered through their iPods, streaming audio, or any other of the mp3 ilk, with sound quality that is often degraded almost to the point of distortion. I came across this information published on the site Gizmodo and would like to share it with you:

"Each year, Stanford Professor of Music Jonathan Berger does an informal test of his students by playing a bunch of different music in a bunch of different formats. Over email, here's how he told me performs the informal study:

Students were asked to judge the quality of a variety of compression methods randomly mixed with uncompressed 44.1 KHz audio. The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC). To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 - particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.

In other words, younger people haven't just grown more tolerant of thin, soulless MP3 renditions of their favorite music, they actually like them. Shitty MP3s, even. Professor Berger as saying that it's the "sizzle sounds" that people are loving because it's what they're comfortable with. So, yes Virginia, iPods really have killed music. People aren't just ignorant of high quality audio, they actually hate it. Gee, thanks for contributing to the downfall of civilization, Apple. Music is dead, everyone, carry on."