A4A: Artists for Artists Review #1

January 17th, 2008

The following is a transcript of a phone conversation with local artist vitaminsforyou; his review of Two Minute Miracles’ album follows:

elvis- Hey
v4u- Hey
elvis- thnx for helping out with the first ever A4A review.
v4u- no prob. it’s a really cool idea.
elvis- let’s learn more about vitaminsforyou.
v4u- ok. what do you want to know?
elvis- where did vitamins for you come from?
v4u- well vitaminsforyou (one word) came from the need to find a name fast to perform a show in my hometown of Winnipeg … about 10 years ago … the rest is mystery.
elvis – where did you get your name? does it mean anything?
v4u- oh I guess I answered this question already .. so the other one was more metaphorical. Well to better answer the first one .. I came from Winnipeg by way of Montreal into the heart of Toronto .. well not the metaphorical heart of Toronto but the geographical one.
elvis- what vitamins do you take?
v4u- the chewable and colorful kind. Also the ones you get from standing out in the sun … vitamin sunshine?
elvis- how do you describe your sound?
v4u- Usually with excessive words and poetic devices, but today for simplicity sake, its’ electronic music with singing.
elvis- what are your feelings about the T.O. indie music scene?
v4u- We went out for a while … well I wouldn’t call it dating, it was a pretty open relationship, then she broke my heart after she moved to Montreal… someone told she is back now, which I think will be a bit awkward if I see her in the streets, but I am over her … kind of … why what are her feelings about me? Did she say something to you?
elvis- what are you working on?
v4u- Borrowed time and money, and about 2 bowls of cereal a day. I am also finishing my new album which should come out early 2008.
elvis- where can people go to get more info on you?
v4u- www.sfeericle-records.com/vitaminsforyou
www.myspace.com/vitaminsforyou (Check out my new single Flesh Python)
or call my mom.
elvis- thnx!
v4u- elvis is the best!

vitaminsforyou reviews Two Minute Miracles – Volume IV – “The Lions of Love” (weewerk records)

“Clever CD reviews rarely live up to cleverly crafted CDs. Some people harp on a band’s name like the Two-Minute Miracles, and give you reasons why in two minutes they live up or live down to their name, or better yet explain to you in two minutes what the album is all about. This would be 400 words, given most people read 200 words a minute. But you should know that on average we only comprehend 60% of what we’ve read, so really we only understand 120 words of those 200 every minute, which means you’d only get 240 fractions of cleverness in two minutes. I’ve only used about 111 words (well 120 if you count these ones here too). But all that has little interest, considering on average, most of you have only really taken in 72 words since the last punctuation mark. Now what would make this more interesting was if I had statistics on the amount of average retention for listeners, and some clever numbers that play off the two minute metaphor, but I don’t. In fact the cliche is about the 3 minute pop song, but 60% of that is still only 1.8 minutes, close to two minutes, but you aren’t reading music in most cases, you are listening, so we are back where we started, if we really can call this any kind of start. So just over 230 words and we haven’t really talked about the album or the band, aside from the illusion to using poetic devices and not so reliable statistical sources. Now you, the reader, given my not so exact scientific calculations, have been reading for 1 minute and just under 15 seconds, and hopefully have decided that you’ve come this far and there is no turning the proverbial “digital page”, patiently hoping eventually to read something about this band and their album. I am also hoping you aren’t going back to the start and re-reading what you’ve read so as to throw a wrench in my fun with numbers game. That’s 340 if you are counting the numbers as words, which I have been, giving you a bit of a break considering 364, would be 5 words (or 4 maybe, with the hyphen). So 27 words to go and the average reader has spent 2 minutes reading this “review” and retained 60% of next to nothing except these 400 words.”

Buy this CD at (weewerk) records and vist The Two Minute Miracles here.

Posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:06 pm by Matte and is filed under Music & Videos.