Tuesday night Tara and I went to the Can Can in downtown Seattle to watch the up and coming musician Vince Mira. We had read about Vince in Seattle Magazine and saw him perform on Evening Magazine, Ellen and Good Morning America. Both fan’s of Johnny Cash, Tara and I were eager to see Vince Mira perform live.

The Can Can is a small intimate setting located underneath the Pike Place Market. The show was (and is) free but you must make reservations before hand (unless you don’t mind standing room only) because space is limited and they assign you a specific table. Our table was located center stage and just to give you an idea of how “small” and “intimate” this place is; our table over-lapped onto the stage and I could pretty much reach out and touch the microphone stand while leaning back in my chair. Our reservations were for 7:45pm with the show scheduled to start at 8:00pm.

At around 8:45pm Vince took the stage, he is young looking and carries himself with an awkwardly young yet mature demeanor. His speaking voice is soft and gracious; and after a quick sound check he strummed right into his first Johnny Cash cover. As soon as the strings on his Gibson guitar started to resonate through the club, Vince transformed from the young and soft spoken - into a true veteran performer with a deep and rich baritone voice. His voice low, rich and exactly on key with every recording of Johnny Cash I have ever heard. His guitar ability was on par with each note and every lyric was sung with feeling and passion. He wasn’t just covering Johnny Cash songs, the kid was channeling the great Man in Black himself.

The show was a mixture of mostly Cash covers as well as songs by Bob Dylan and Carl Perkins. Though Vince played mostly covers, and was discovered (playing on the street of Pike Place) performing Johnny Cash covers, he also has a few original tunes of his own. These Vince Mira originals are amazingly tight and very well composed tunes. You could definitely feel the Johnny Cash inspiration in his song writing but they contain enough originality and credit to Vince that he really made it his own sound.

Vince flies out to Nashville in August to record his first album at the Johnny Cash - Cash Cabin studio (produced by John Carter Cash). Having already recorded an E.P. at the Cash Cabin, Vince is looking to complete the album and have a release party at the ShowBox in downtown Seattle by mid October. You can catch a performance of Vince Mira at the Can Can or subscribe to his mailing list via VinceMira.com to get all the latest news and upcoming shows information.

Listen to a selection of covers and original songs by Vince Mira via my featured muxtape: http://featured.muxtape.com/

But try to see him live, you won’t be disappointed.

Photo Credit: flickr.com/begley under Creative Commons License

My radio dial doesn’t stray away from 102.5 KZOK all too often. It is there that I enjoy the Bob Rivers Show on my morning drive into work, Gary Crow at lunch and epic classic rock tunes throughout the remainder of my day. I often wonder how cool it would have been to see many of the songs played on that station performed live and in person. I know some may still be touring, but I would want to see them in the original element of their prime era…

So here we go, five bands I wish I could have seen including my one song request:

1. Led Zeppelin: Bron-y Aur Stomp
2. The Beatles: Let it Be
3. The Doors: Riders on the Storm
4. Pink Floyd: Comfortably Numb
5. Cream: Sunshine of Your Love

To hear these songs… Visit my featured muxtape: http://featured.muxtape.com/

Note: Muxtape seems to be having some connection issues at the moment. If you don’t get through at first try try again… a few minutes later.

I’ve refreshed the songs on my Muxtape, it now consists of a random selection of songs from my iTunes that I enjoy but haven’t listened to in along time. Listen to the new mux at: http://evansnyder.muxtape.com

Last week I mentioned a new service dubbed: Muxtape. It’s a free service that allows you twelve song uploads to create a virtual mix cassette tape. I’ve really enjoined creating my own mix as well as exploring other peoples muxtapes.

In the past week, the creator of muxtape has rolled out several new features. One new feature is a colorful table on your login screen that displays the muxtapes of other users. It loads to the beat of a secret algorithm that detects muxtapes you may not have listened to yet; which helps focus the site in a way that users can continue to find new music. Also included in the updates are RSS feeds and favorite subscriptions giving you the ability to track other users muxes that you enjoy. You can have up to twelve favorite muxes at a time, similar to being limited to just twelve songs in your own muxtape.

Though it may seem that the service is almost too simple and limiting; I feel instead that it rather makes it very welcoming and useful. Only getting twelve songs and twelve favorites pushes the users to only keep what they feel is the cream of the crop, the best of the best; keeping quality up and over complication down. It really is making a big splash as a fast and upcoming web application.

Muxtape has captured attention of such notable websites as:

• Wired - “Muxtape Keeps The Mixtape Concept Alive”
• Daring Fireball - “Super-simple music sharing site lets you create virtual mix tapes. Three-field sign-up and you’re done.”
• 37Signals - “Dead simple, absolutely clear, feeds a common desire.”

Keep up to date on all the new features rolling out of Muxtape, that seems almost daily, at their weblog: http://muxtape.tumblr.com/

A new service launched today called Muxtape, a very simple way to share music with your friends via the world wide web. It is based off of old mix cassette tapes where you would make a mix of your favorite tunes, record them to a cassette and pass it along to a friend or prospective significant other. Muxtape allows anyone to create an account and gives you enough space for what would normally fit on an old cassette: 12 songs no larger than 10MB each.

Everything about Muxtape is simple; from account creation, uploading your music, rearranging the order, sharing your music to playing the songs with just one click. I took a few minutes and got mine up and running, check it out at: http://evansnyder.muxtape.com/

Muxtape was created by Justin Oullette who had this to say about it’s development and launch:

I’ve been working on this literally every spare moment I’ve had for the past few weeks so I’m very excited to be at a point where I can start sharing it with everyone. Please give it a try and tell me what you think (good or bad, bug report or feature request.) My goal is nothing short of changing the way we consume, distribute, and discover music.

Justin also has plans for more features as he states at the Muxtape Blog:

There’s already some great muxtapes! The ability to discover relevant new muxtapes will be the very next thing I do after a couple bug fixes. Also coming soon: M4A support, RSS feeds (last minute omission from the launch schedule), more customization, many many many other things.

Note: As of right now, the service only allows files in the MP3 format. Your DRM‘ed music from services like the iTunes Music Store will not work unless you find some way to strip the DRM from the file.

It’s everything I would want Flickr to be… but for music.

Get creative!