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Friday, October 22, 2004
Every Album released in October
Alexis Petridis listens to every album released in October in The Guardian today, which seems like it would be a relatively horrible task , given that it means that you'd have to listen to all that stuff that you pass in the record shop with out ever even giving a thought to listening to. Some of it includes: " New Christian Music, which seems to be alt-country with added God-bothering. There is something that advertises itself as the 'hardest techno you've ever heard - maximum headcase extreme noise terror'"
He talks about the difficulty in discerning any specific trend in music, that everything appears to be making a comeback, and download cultures promotion of the song over the album. I don't know how I stand on this yet; even when I download, I usually download albums, but this might be out of habit. And I often have a fondness for the 'bad' songs by some of my favourite bands, they can make me laugh, and wonder at the audacitiy of putting them on a album in the first place. Plus, if you take the 'bad' songs off an early Sebadoh, GBV or any Fall album and you've suddenly got a much different listening experience. A better listening experience?
I'll take an audiaciously bad song over a just-kind-of-okay-and-innoffensive song any day. I remember that my high school art teacher Mrs. Ridley used to say that all art that takes risks goes through an in-between ugly stage, and you have to be able to go through that with out rejecting what you're working on. I have a nagging feeling that feeling avoiding the 'bad' stuff might mean there's less good stuff in the long run.
But, on the other side, I guess the point could be made that you can still make the bad stuff, just don't release it. Or just don't download it, which is what peope are doing now anyway.
Elsewhere, Alexis mentions a song on a Buggles (of Video Killed the Radio Star fame) rerelease about Astroboy that got me excited for a second, until he added that it was "awful beyond measure"
On that note, I should put together a disk of all comic-book inspired songs, some McCartney(that Magneto song on Venus and Mars), some Joe Satriani... some...
Actually, no, I should NOT put together a disk of all comic-book inspired songs.
posted by Alan
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6:06 AM
Monday, October 18, 2004
Wasn't it just August?
I've been dreading it, and had been told it can sometimes appear in Barrie as early as Halloween - but when I looked out my window this morning, the 18th of October, this is what I saw: 
posted by Alan
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7:13 AM
Sunday, October 17, 2004
A new kind of computer dating...
Amusing anecdote in the Police Blotter section of my newly adopted home town's paper The Barrie Advance: A bizarre incident where a man stole a computer from a woman studying at Georgian College has led to numerous charges being laid against a 24-year-old Minesing man. Police learned that the man had broken into the student's residence while she and her roommate were away for the weekend. He removed a computer. Upon their return, the man telephoned to say he was a police officer and had found her computer. He came to the residence and again identified himself as a police officer. The women were suspicious and contacted Barrie Police. It turned out the man had simply stolen the equipment in order to meet the girls. He now faces charges of criminal harassment, impersonating police, possession of stolen property and obstructing police.
posted by Alan
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1:45 PM
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Jonatham Lethem in Discussion this Sunday October 17th
Jonathan Lethem will be in discussion with Eleanor Wachtel on the October 17th episode of CBC Radio One's Writers & Company. They usually have the most recent episode archived, but this the feature appears to be blocked now for some reason, so you'll have to catch on it's initial run this Sunday October 17th from 3-4 pm Eastern Standard Time.
The CBC's website is about 1/5 as good as the BBC,although, this is probably pretty good considering they have a tiny percentage of the Beebs budget. I think it's really a shame that more of their shows, such as Ideas, Writer's and Company aren't archived. I believe it's for copyright reasons, but how come WFMU and This American Life can figure out a way around this but we can't? Is this something to do with the CRTC or what?
But the customer service side of the CBC's site is really responsive. They recently changed their live radio streaming from RealPlayer and Quicktime to Windows Media Player only. As a result, I wasn't able to connect due to the fact I'm still on Mac OS 9. I immediately sent support a pissy email, never expecting to see any change, but the next time I tried to listen there was this message: "NEW - OS 8/9 users: we've made some technical changes as of September 24, 2004. You should now be able to connect."
My tax dollars are being well spent on the salary for the employee made that change.
posted by Alan
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5:59 AM
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