Wow.  It’s going to be hard to come up with the proper words.  Words that will do these guys justice, words that will properly describe the emotion, passion, and energy of these two bands are not easily formed.

I was a teenager when I first heard The Rentals, shortly after their first album, Return of the Rentals.  Stacks of vintage synths, Orange Amplifiers, and 5, 6, or 7 musicians colliding in danceable and incredible sonic goodness.  Eventually, you can pull your nose out of liner notes and go to a show.

For me, it was around 10 years before this dream could come to fruition.  If the Rentals were ever around the Southeast (it was really rare) it just didn’t work out for me.  When the news surfaced that Matt Sharp had put together a group to do some Rentals songs, I was stoked, but cautious with my expectations.

This group blew me away.  Matt’s stage presence (you may remember seeing him in the early days of Weezer) is terrific.  There’s a world he enters when he steps on the stage that really renews my hope in show business.  Not just Matt; Laura Chipman, Ben Pringle, Sara Radle, Dan Joeright, and Rachel Haden can’t be matched for stage presence, talent, and the ability to follow carefully choreographed mid-song instrument switches.  Rachel played all 7 keyboards at one time or another.  She picked up the Bass several times, acoustic guitar, the small mic’ed set of bells on occasion; sang beautifully. Laura played the Violin, 3 or 4 of the keyboards, and sang in perfect harmony with Matt and Rachel.  Sara too: all over the keys, singing beautifully.  Dan, the drummer, appropriately stayed in royal command of the rhythm.  As a drummer, I can appreciate the feat of being in the rhythm section with three different bassists in one evening.  Ben: WOW.  Ben blew us all the way.  He started in the ‘synth cave’ played bass, guitar, trombone, lap steel, and didn’t miss a beat on any of those.  He had energy that, like Matt’s, makes me want to present a video of this show to other people who grace stages all over the world.

They played old Rentals songs, an old Weezer B-Side, and even Lou Reed’s Take a Walk on the Wild Side.  The news (from the end of the show) is that Matt reported a forthcoming album.  Sweet.

Ozma was terrific too.  After a two year hiatus, they decided to come back and give it another shot. They’re really on top of their game. Their set was tight, and they played a lot of good ol’ songs.  Since I’ve seen Ozma twice before, I won’t be able to ramble like an idiot (see above) about them.  That shouldn’t diminish their show though – it was unbelievable.  They weren’t too clear about their plans for after this tour is over.  I tried to pry but didn’t get any solid answer about forthcoming albums, but I suspect that we’ll see more of Ozma.

Great time.  Great show.  I’m easy to excite, but these guys didn’t leave anything to chance.

I’ve decided to create another blog to differentiate subject matter. The crowd I’ve attracted to space-age wasteland is largely addicted to productivity methods, GTD, gmail, and other geekery and hackery (I’m a blogger, I may coin words as I please).

For my new ministry and work in keynotes for youth events and for my liturgical music, I’ve created bryan.themurdaughs.com. It’s certainly not meant to be exclusive but they say that guys like to compartmentalize.

That’s all (for now).

So why have I been quietly calculating my next move?

First, some details on what’s different about bingbit.

1. Old: Liturgical music publishers charge a per copy license for music and separate the licensing from mechanical reproduction: costly.
   bingbit: Parish Licensing Program allows music ministers and worship leaders to purchase a combination copy-limited piece of music and an annual license to perform the music: much cheaper.
2. Old: The same liturgical music publishers charge a monthly fee for publications to make suggestions for songs to play on a given Sunday (songs out of their library, more often that not).
   bingbit: The unique sharebit (FREE) resource offers suggestions from many publishers (including, but not limited to bingbit). Ideas for this resource are contributed and managed by the community.
3. Old: Publishers are often forced to focus on the business and the marketing much like major music labels are.
   bingbit: Focuses on the liturgy and on the music. We don’t focus on bottom line and management of overhead.

Sharebit is free, and each bingbit song on the annual Parish Licensing Program costs $0.99. That’s less than a dollar. Make all the copies you need for your musicians. Play the song as many times as you need. Renew it if you need it next year. All of the music is downloadable as a PDF lead sheet and many titles already have recordings (if you need some help learning it).

Sharebit is in alpha stage right now. I hope to have a public beta version when things around my parish get started up in September, but I’m waiting on a few functions to be integrated. The public bingbit site is still missing some major graphical components but I hope to launch it around the same time.

With everything going on, it’s been hard to manage development of these two properties. It’s been hard enough to just get a few songs onto the bingbit store at lulu. In fact, I’ve turned over all of the functional development to my friend Jonathan, who has also been quite busy with his own work.

So you’ve got my whole plan now. Not much I can do to stop myself now, huh?