Fun-NY!

File Under: Web, Master

Well, it's the top link at blogdex, but I gotta jump on the bandwagon here, cuz this is too damn hilarious.

Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction

posted by John 12:12 PM

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Valentine's Day Is Over

File Under: Local Notes

So I returned to my Friday gig at Garrison's last night. I was thinking that Valentine's Day would bring out the lovey-dovey couples out spending lots of money to party together, and yes, mercenary little me was hoping to get in on a little of that action.

Well, FOILED AGAIN, gang. It's not that there wasn't anybody there, but I didn't see any google-eyed twosomes throwing their dosh to the wind. You know, the kind who might have requested "The Wind Beneath My Wings," or possibly something by Air Supply.

So here's my theory. These couples obviously exist, and I'm sure they had a wonderful time last night. But they probably went somewhere they could get BOOZE! I mean, high-class booze, obviously. Your champagne, your single-malt, what have you. Maybe the idea of a two-ended bendy straw sticking out of a scalding hot mug of cappucino doesn't quite ring the chimes of the lovers of today. No, alcohol is far more likely to lead to the holiday tradition of fumbling sexual advances. Let's hear it for the hooch.

ANNNNyway, I'll be back there next Friday, playing my heart out to whoever wants to drop by.

Although next time I'll probably arrange my chair so I'm not singing directly to an evil clown made from neon tubes. It sort of spoils the mood.

posted by John 11:07 AM

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The Legal and the... Mostly Legal

File Under: Web, Master

I'm a reasonably politically aware fella, frequently too much so for my own sanity. These crazy days, in order to keep my head from filling with steam and launching off my shoulders like a screeching, rocket-fueled teakettle, I need serious distractions! That is to say, I take my distractions seriously. Especially if they make me laugh.

Does that make sense to you? Too bad.

Right now, here are my primary net-based download distractions. Broadband users only need apply to these, sorry.

EMusic. $10 a month and more legal mp3s than any ears can handle. Do they have Avril Lavigne's latest? Furk, no. If you really want that, I'm sure you've heard of Kazaa by now, but that's not what I'm talking about. (Read that link, BTW. Really.)

EMusic is loaded up with excellent jazz and tiny little weird pop record labels and lots more. For a long time, they had all the pre-Warner Elvis Costello albums up for grabs, but since the recent Rhino re-releases, those have gone away. So what have they got now? Camper Van Beethoven, Thelonious Monk, They Might Be Giants, Chick Corea, Thin White Stripes, Mose Alison, Tom Waits and LOTS of things you've never heard of. I mean... LOTS!

I find that cross-referencing between the EMusic library and the allmusic.com database yields amazing results. When you subscribe to EMusic, you can just take as many albums as you want. So if something sucks, no big loss, grab something else.

My current discovery obsessions are Komeda and The Decemberists. Check 'em out if you get the chance.

Okay, now we get into the gray market a little bit here...

The Digital Archive Project is a group dedicated to the distribution of high-quality, offbeat television shows to the masses. These are shows that are not available for purchase, so no one's losing money on the deal. If an ep becomes available on tape or DVD, it is removed from the dap database.

So what shows are we talking about here? Well, the whole thing was organized around Mystery Science Theater 3000, but has branched off to include Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Kids In The Hall, The State, The Brak Show, Invader Zim, SCTV and many more. It's always on the grow, and it's a fantastic resource for those of us who thought we'd never see some of those episodes with Joel.

There are a couple of ways to get these shows, but I find the most reliable is the P2P application edonkey.

Oh, the hours and days to be wasted with these tools. Have fun stormin' the castle!

posted by John 10:45 AM

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A little terrah goes a long way

File Under: Rantin' and Ravin'

Last week, we had our terrah level raised to one step below "Duck and Co-vahhhh!" with an ETA of the calamity being, oh, roughly, TODAY.

But ABC News broke a story Thursday that the main bit of intelligence that decision was based on turned out to be a stinking lie. If polygraphs mean anything, that is.

So, next obvious step would be to tell people they can calm down, right? Have a nice weekend, get a little shopping done, help the economy, right?

NOPE! Things are still freaky. Stay the hell out of the streets.

You don't suppose the massive world-wide protests that have been widely, widely promoted might have anything to do with this timetable, do you?

Honestly, this is SO obvious that I hesitate to mention it. I'm just glad I don't watch alot of TV "news", and thus missed out on the great duct tape rush of 2003.

posted by John 10:08 AM

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Big On Blogs

File Under: Web, Master

Slowly but surely, I'm starting to put some of my regular weblog haunts in the right-hand column.

A Piecemeal Banquet is the work of a few old friends of mine, and no one knows it exists yet. Catch the wave of excitement before it hits, man. Note that the word is "Banquet" and not, as I mistakenly typed at first, "Bouquet." It tastes good, but it doesn't necessarily smell good.

I love the pseudo-Victorian feel of Tailors Today. Some people got their own particular flavor of weird, ya know?

posted by John 9:19 PM

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Suckin' in the Wind

File Under: Rantin' and Ravin'

Warning: The following rant contains supposedly historical material with no supporting documentation whatsoever. I'm flying without a net, folks. If I've said something that's over the deep end here, drop me a line and I'll probably correct it or apologize or something.

"So John," you ask, "does mp3.com suck or what?"

Ah, young grasshopper, this question reveals tremendous insight and wisdom. Yes, I can assure you that mp3.com does indeed suck like an atomic vacuum cleaner.

See, back in the day (1999 or so, roughly) mp3.com was a godsend for the net-savvy independent musician, and even the wannabes. Anyone could post their music for the whole wide world to hear. For no money down, you could assemble and sell CDs. Surfers could turn critic and put their favorite songs on "stations" (playlists). There was a genuine community. Sure there was a LOT of crap, but between the charts and the stations, the cream did sort of rise to the top.

Then came the whole "my.mp3.com" business. This was actually a brilliant idea. mp3.com bought a whole crapload of commercial CD's, made mp3's of the tracks, tied 'em to a database and put the whole magilla online. A music lover... let's call her Sally... could put her own CDs in her CD-ROM drive at home for just a few seconds (or minutes, depending on her connection) and register the bulk of her collection with the my.mp3 database. Then mp3.com gave Sally rights to listen to the company's copies of her CDs from any computer on the 'net.

Are you with me so far? Okay, the best part of the my.mp3 system was this: Participating record stores sold CDs through my.mp3, and when a consumer like Sally bought one online, she gained rights to listen to that CD instantly! Before the CD arrived in the mail, she would be listening to it!

Finally, this all tied back to the independent artists selling CDs on mp3.com. If Sally bought one of those indie CDs, it worked the same way. She instantly got rights to listen to the entire disc before it got to her in the mail.

What's so great about that? Well, frankly, nothing. Not ANYMORE!

The greatness was in the potential. If there had been no roadblocks, if my.mp3 had run its course, it would have meant that commercial and independent music would be rubbing elbows in the same database. Consumer Sally uses the same process to buy the music and the same system to listen to it, regardless of record company support. It would have meant a paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the way people like Sally divide up their music collections.

So what happened to this utopian vision? Two words: Napster and RIAA. Yeah, that's oversimplifying things, but the Napster issue was the beginning of the end.

Napster had the good fortune to capture the public imagination and become synonymous with "mp3" in many minds. This also meant that almost everyone assumed that all mp3's were illegal because most of the ones on Napster were illegal. mp3.com was distributing a buttload of legal mp3's, but they also had done this weird thing with the my.mp3 system. Was it legal? Probably not, but nobody really knew for sure. Enter the RIAA, set on making an example.

When the smoke cleared from the court battle that followed, mp3.com had to pay a LOT of money to keep all that commercial music in the database. Apparently they couldn't afford it, because it's sure as heck gone now. This process turned mp3.com from a hotshot business working from a position of strength to just another struggling dot com. Getting music from fans wasn't pulling down enough cash.

So they started getting cash from the people who could least afford it: the artists themselves.

It's been a downward spiral over the last couple of years, starting with upping the prices on CD sales. The latest blow is that if a musician doesn't pay for "Premium Artist Services," he can only put three songs on the site. The amount used to be limitless. The company decided not to "grandfather in" older users either, so if a musician isn't willing or able to pony up the dough, he gets the bulk of his songs removed. And don't forget, there are zillions of station playlists on mp3.com based on all the songs that USED to be there. Now that hundreds of thousands of songs have been removed more or less randomly from the system, the whole station thing has essentially been slaughtered.

So, to sum up, Soundacious says POOPY to mp3.com. Yup. Big fat smelly poopy.

On a where-are-they-now side note, former CEO of mp3.com Michael Robertson is now trying to make money with a Windows clone for Linux. Whatever, Michael.

posted by John 7:51 PM

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8 Arms To Hold You With

File Under: Web, Master

Thank goodness someone is finally speaking out on the controversial issue of Octopus Robots.

posted by John 5:25 PM

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Dark Lord Danny

File Under: Other People's Music

Yesterday I went to see the fine, fine film Chicago, and was surprised to see Danny Elfman credited with some of the score.

Of course, it's not like he hasn't already written the scores to fully half of the movies produced by Hollywood in the last 20 years or so. But it was a little peculiar to see his name attached to a film version of a 70-something-year-old musical.

Anyway it's cool, because it gives me a trifling excuse of a reason to talk about the man.

And the question is this...

Are we appreciating Danny Elfman enough?

I want you to get the Simpsons theme going through your head for a moment. See how easy that was? He wrote that, you know.

Younger readers (or just readers who weren't listening to college radio in the 80s) might not be aware that this heir to the film score throne of John Williams was, for about a decade, a friggin'... rock... god.

The name of the band was Oingo Boingo, and they were wickid-awsum. An 8-member combo with a kickin' horn section delivering high-strung songs about alienation, pedophilia, biting insects, faceless surgeons armed with razors, and the island of Dr. Moreau. And the whole shebang was driven by the wailing, perpendicular guitar prowess of Steve Bartek and the soulful, deranged, howling genius of Dan-bo Elfman. Those were the days.

BTW, in my Googling to put this little piece together, I discovered that a wireless company in the Seattle area opted to use the name "Boingo" for their services. Needless to say, I hope they get their asses sued into the ground.

posted by John 5:16 PM

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Cawfee Tawlk with Pawl Bawldwin

File Under: Local Notes

I recently snagged a weekly gig at Garrison's Global Bar in downtown Hammond, LA.

This place is a good example of the kind of changes taking place in Hammond, my old home town. It's an internet cafe, it has funky furniture and cappucinos and vegetable juice... it is impossible to imagine a place like this here ten years ago. Not to mention the sushi bar down the street...

Hammond is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. Realize that when I first started playing live, I felt it necessary to move to Vermont because I didn't think there'd be much interest in Louisiana for the singer-songwriter shtick. And now we've got a music festival here, one in Ponchatoula, several new venues opening up and more new, tasty restaurants than you can shake a stick at.

I kid you not, folks, it's going on here.

By the way, that Garrison's gig is Friday nights from 8 to 10 p.m. Drop in some time, okay?

posted by John 8:47 AM

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