TUNING

If It Rocks like fuck, it must Be Belgium

One doesn't normally think of rockin' when it comes to Belgium.
Then along comes  Twist and Frit  to change your mind, irreprably I might add.
Beneath those cardigans and polite haircuts beats the heart of something wild.
Of special note are Gus Derse & The Kili-Jacks ,  (at Left)The real Muscles From Brussels. These leek -eaters don't know that you are not supposed to combine the cha cha, surf music, and early fifties R&R to  make some of the finest dance music Norton records never heard of.

Why Is The New Robot Uprising Strangely Familiar With 18th Century Church Architecture?

Free Audiobook site Books Should Be Free seemed like a good idea at the time.
As far as I'm concerned it still is, but it brings to light something I was unaware of in the field of audio books.
Get this, some books are read by robots .
I appreciate that these books are free .but even Asimov's Robot Trilogy shouldn't be read by automatons. It would seem that it takes just as much time to prep a book to be read by Rossum's finest as it would to have a meat puppet read the thing.
Friedrich Nietzsches' Thus Spake Zarathustra comes round to actually being appropriate to this method, but for sheer whatthehell? you simply must try  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3"Brescia" to "Bulgaria" .
Even if the damn thing was read by Sir Anthony Hopkins instead of a disembodied machine, it doesn't make a goddamned bit of sense as an audio book
Deathless prose like:
" BRESCIA (anc. Brixia),
a city and episcopal see of Lombardy, Italy, the capital of the province of Brescia, finely situated at the foot of the Alps, 52 m. E. of Milan and 40 m. W. of Verona by rail. Pop. (1901) town, 42,495; commune, 72,731. The plan of the city is rectangular, and the streets intersect at right angles, a peculiarity handed down from Roman times, though the area enclosed by the medieval walls is larger than that of the Roman town, which occupied the eastern portion of the present one. The Piazza del Museo marks the site of the forum, and the museum on its north side is ensconced in a Corinthian temple with three cellae, by some attributed to Hercules, but more probably the Capitolium of the city, erected by Vespasian in A.D. 73 (if the inscription really belongs to the building; cf. Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. v. No. 4312, Berlin, 1872), and excavated in 1823. It contains a famous bronze statue ..."
would benefit greatly from, I dunno, pictures maybe?
Rightthinking Avantgaurdist that I am, I tried various applications of this audio.
Freinds,  I am here to tell you It does not work it does not work as a sleep aid, its'  seemingly soporific drone only brings up horrid nightmares of bolt necked Victorian Mechanical  Men rabbiting on about wainscoting.
Neither can it be used in an amusing post -modern fashion in the creation of electronic dance music.
It toils not, neither does it spin.
Social Historian and R&B hero Edwin Starr might well have seen this coming if he was a prescient sort .
To paraphrase his smash hit "War"- " The machine read audio Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" what is it good for?
Absolutely nuthin-say it again"

Here's an example of what I mean .

Librivox  is a slightly better alternative where you can subscribe to chapters of books in the public domain in iTunes or from an rss feed.

What Makes Bob Holler?

Western Swing wasn't all about Bob Wills you know, it was also about flour- judging by the number of Western Swing bands sponsored by baking supplies.
Western Swing On 78 blog does what it says on the tin- and several adjoining tins- so great is their love, dedication, and altruism in bringing this forgotten music to the fore.
I would also like to thank them from the bottom of my heart for not hosting the downloads on rapidshare, which they could have easily done - they're on mediafire, which, if you're a shameless mp3 hound like me- you know is the good stuff.

Undisputed masters of WS -Milt Brown and His Musical Brownies are conspicuously absent because Milt Brown's estate, which consists largely of empty Nugrape and whiskey bottles, smashed Cadillacs and stale biscuits, is sewn up tighter than,uh, something that's really tight....... No matter, that leaves more room for The Sons Of The West (at Left).
The site has streamlined histories, all- important matrix numbers and not a whiff of acedemia, thank god.
These guys should get some kinda Smithsonian grant ,or something.

KISS' STANLEY IN INCOHESIVENESS SHOCKER

This is an update to a post I made last year, now revised with help from the kind curatorship of Woody from 21 Gun Salute
It Seems that Bret B. had a bit of trouble scraping up the bandwith needed for the overwhelming response to his Paul Stanley post, and understandably so.
Woody took up the mantle of historical banality and informed me of same.

Paul Stanley needs no introduction. Every fucking song at a Kiss live show, however, seems to ........"-Bret B. of Post Punk Junk

Paul Stanley - “People Let Me Get This Off My Chest is an 86 MB zip file, 70 tracks strong , of nothing but Kiss Rhythm Guitarist Paul Stanley's inane between songs patter.

One could ask the rhetorical -to -the- tits question "Why?" but that would interfere with the enjoyment of same.
Great for fans of the "Whe're from Newcastle... where brown ale comes from..." interstitial inanities of hard rockers Venom

Resources, Such as They Are
Paul Stanley.Com
Wikipedia On Paul Stanley-this is one entry that has absolutely no one contesting it. That's No One.
I don't even care if there are any lies sprinkled throughout the article, which seems to be legit. Fascinating tidbits about his surgery and facial deformities abound (abound=are mentioned).

"Stanley was in fact born with Microtia, a congenital deformity of the pinna , or outer ear. "

Stanley badly needed hip replacement surgery but suffered through the Rock The Nation tour first, finally getting the surgery in October 2005. Complications from the surgery required a second in December of that year, and in December 2005 it has been announced that a third hip surgery will be necessary. Stanley regards the degeneration of his left hip as partly the product of thousands of shows performed since the early 1970s. In the "Rock The Nation Live" DVD he spends much more time standing in one place than he has on previous DVDs and tours."-ibid

Paul Stanley's Paradise [Fansite, message board & quarterly fanzine dedicated to Paul Stanley]
"He needs no introduction. [There's that word again-ed.] If you're here, then you must be a Paul Stanley fan and frankly that means you know enough in my book."-from introduction.
Has this webmaster heard of irony?
Methinks not. And by the way, I use "methinks" in the most utterly ironic way possible.
Let's take a look at the ontology of the statement quoted:
"If you are here [Fansite Paul Stanley's Paradise] Then you must be a Paul Stanley fan."
There is a perfectly pitched ring of desperation about the qualifier "must" , turning it from a conditional resolution of a logical proposition into a silent prayer.

Please God, let someone love Paul Stanley as much as I do, so I don't seem like such a confused and obsessive yoik-I will even set up a hit counter that glorifies thy name and shit- Hey Ma, I'm prayin' here, next time knock before you enter a room- it's what civilized people do. Shit now I gott start over....

Let's Stick It To The Man (Sorta)

The Listening Post (part of the Wired Blog Network, and oddly, also part of a balanced breakfast) reports on a hack that lets you stick it to The Man Rupert Murdock. Kinda.
Here's How it works:
The Problem: A band or label has uploaded music to MySpace to be streamed but not downloaded.
You as an omnivorous consumer of music become frustated by this. You want to download the song or songs of that hot new band you've heard about so you can give them a second or third listen at your leisure. Because MySpace stores music (at myspacecdn.com) using long and involved URLs (rather like Amazon items) , you need some help.

The Solution: MyspaceMP3.org lets you enter a band name or whatever abstractword the band uses in their Myspace URL (eg: myspace.com/[fucked up signifyer] URL) and then download any of the MP3s hosted on that page.

The Caveats:
Downloads using this method are stripped of their filenames and ID3 tags, so you have to stop and label/tag each one.MP3s are only encoded at a measly 96 Kbps with a 22.05 kHz sampling rate , so if you enjoy convoluted denoument that sounds like AM radio, then you'll eat this up with a spoon.

My Angry Rebuttal:
Bands should use Myspace for listing their tour dates and ego gratification, not for product placement.
That's what blogs and websites are for. For god's sake, If you have a record out, that means you at least have some money- money that could be used for a web prescence.
If your gonna plead poverty there's always LiveJournal.
Yeah, that's it- take back Livejournal from the goth kids and mass murderers with their allegedly amusing pomo avatars and emoticons, their inarticulate appreciation of cultural phenomena, and their general whining. Only you can prevent forest fires.

A Hype Machine For The Rest Of Us

MEGA SUPER MAMMOTH MP3 Blog List is kind of the anti Hype Machine in a way .
Blog listing are lovingly hand crafted by a single dude and you get mini features on new and nifty MP3 blogs , all the more important considering the fleeting nature of these alleged scoundrels.
The other great service is an extensive list of defunct blogs to help you weed out your blogroll and notation in the listings of how frequently updated some of these suckers are.
Not that I want to add more freight to his already impressive workload, but it would be nice to see alist of blogs that haven't been updated since 2006 or January of '07.
Excellent and much needed work, my freind.

Cease To Exist-Until Somebody Makes a Blog About You...

Shunned By Wikepedian Do-Gooders, Manson Music is an MP3 blog that narrowcasts the everyday evil of one Charles Mills Manson.
Think what you want,or think what you can about this man and his music, but free speech is free speech.
Features interviews and music spanning thirty years.

Get Your Jesus Freak On

Heavenly Grooves and The Ancient Star-Song are two mp3 blogs that feature a wide assortment of "Jesus Freak" music in all genres.
Neither blog seems especially ecumenical , which is a good thing, as it allows you to determine the value or oddity of the selections from an often overlooked sub-genre of record collecting.
The selections feature handmade covers and questionable art direction that you probably put in the "maybe" pile at the thrift store and now you don't have to spend that all important $1.68 for something that doesn't even have the lasting kitsch value you so desperately crave.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE

Model Citizen... Zero Discipline must know what it's like to be unpopular, or at least have an empathy for the unpopular.
That particular empathy , in the wrong hands, can come across as flippant, dismissive and annoying.
Not so with this thing.
The music on offer here has the wiff of being lived with and lived through . Much of it is too obscure to have entertained any notions of being popular.
It's like hanging out with my high school freinds, at their houses, away from the pulsbeat of what was popular.
The kind of freinds I had in the 80's had a kind of private disdain for the popular that was never voiced. If it had been, It would have meant derision and scorn.
Without them I would have no idea of the nuances of Buddy Rich, Genesis, Beatle Bootlegs, Taj Mahal, Brian Eno and the Dixie Dregs.

Had their been such a device as the Giveafuckometer™ (pictured at left) you couldn't tell from these people that it was working.

When held up to the aforementioned guage, Model Citizen... Zero Discipline continues the happy tradition of making more false alarms for Giveafuckometer™ repairmen.
No one told them you shouldn't care about Souxie and the Banshees offshoot "The Creatures", Ian Gillan, The Pump Up The Volume Soundtrack. and Tuff Darts. Thank God for that. And now I'm telling you you should.

The Dos and Donts of Mp3 blogging

DO A) Include links to purchase Items posted about B) Be a girl. I understand it's great fun if done properly , and your writing will improve by 60%. Why don't more girls do MP3 blogs? I have found that most girls who really like music do so without all that messy irony, postmodern or otherwise. Even this girl C) Narrowcast the hell out of your piece de resistance'. I'd much rather read a blog about Soundtracks or Portuguese Fado (Is there another kind?) D) Get all Proustian about the first time you heard that song and how it made you think of that weird kid in your homeroom, and then go on to describe that kid in detail, and then post the song. I love that shit E) Be Australian. F) Be French. G) Be Brazilian. H) Be an unreconstructed old 60's dude who's been hoarding music since LBJ.

DON'T A) If you are posting an album in it's entirety, please break it up into tracks. I don't mind sub -editing a file labled "Side A" but many music loving folks do not have the means or skills to likewise. B)If you are posting an album in its' entirety, do not refer to the resulting files as "sharity" or "album sharity". This term is too clever by half and will not absolve you of any litigation should such an event occur. Instead, refer to it as "steality" or "Unauthorizedduplicationisaviolationofapplicablelawsity". Love the concept (lots)-hate the name C) Don't use rapidsare. (see footnotes for a great alternative)* D) Don't be a total dick and fink out somebody who uses rapidshare to perform a valuable service to the community** E) Don't post Podcasts. I'm here for the songs and the Expert Commentary and Thoughtful Reconsiderations, not how well you mix them. If you do decide to post a "songlist" or "mixtape" make sure you do it right and allow users to download the songs individually if they so choose. If you are a Dance Music MP3 blog, you can ignore this item. F) Don't post videos. I have been guilty of this ,but just because YouTube has it, and it's 3:00 AM and you should be in bed instead of blogging away, doesn't excuse you from lazy blogging. It's ok to include a link to the video in a career -spanning overview of the artists' innate coolness-just not the whole thing. G) Don't be a semi pro outfit with more ads than free music. H) No matter how well connected you are in the blogosphere or music industry, don't flaunt it. Hit points don't really count if they're from nerds who will stop at nothing to get free music. Dude- it's an MP3 blog- any semblance of hipness, cred, or credulity went out the window tied with twine to your taste and judgement the minute you decided to post your first tune. I) Don't use an MP3 blog to promote your radio show . There are exceptions to this rule, however J) "Please, please, please, capitalize your sentences and proper nouns. Writing in all lower case was kool in, like, 1999. The hippest thing you can do now is write well, check your spelling, and use proper grammar." [Submitted in Comments by Dust] K) Don't name your blog after lyrics or phrases because the make a blogroll look like shit and then they have to be abbrieviated or reworded thus destroying their intrinsic coolness. Song titles three words long are cool though. L) Don't alphabetize blogs in your linkroll using the definate article [A, An, The] . The proper alphabetization is "Wilfull Eclectic, The" , but you can just omit "The". I like to alphabetize blogs that start with def. article "A" using the first letter of the second word, leaving the "A" intact in the listing-and also alphebetize blogs beginning with "An" with the phrase intact, but that's just me.

There you have it- my roundup of peeves and accolades for and about MP3 Blogs. I would hesitate to call them "pet " peeves, one is kind to one's pets . These peeves I would like to stomp into jelly, or perhaps something akin to the thin gray paste produced when you pet your angelfish too hard. If you recognize yourself in the "DO" column-keep on keepin on, my brother/sister. If you shudder at the eerie resemblence to your blog divined from the vague blanket statements spat unto the "DON'T" column, don't angrily defend your right to be a corporate whore or rhetoricly ask who the fuck I think I am making these pronouncements through the clenched teeth/sphincter of the comments section-just quietly correct the problem. Why? because here's a little secret vis this post: [I don't care what you think]. Other times I just might. But not now.
** Once upon a time, an honest, decent , god -fearing blog that just happened to have an utterly filthy name decided that many people would like to download comedy comedy and more comedy. Then some dickehead ratted them out to rapidshare™ who promptly deleted the files without checking the source of the complaint, or whether or not the blog was in fact in violation of international copyright laws, etc. Subsequently, the blog's authors have lost the will to live (at least in terms of the blogosphere) and now spend their days wondering what kind of humorless bastard would attack something good and pure (and funny) just because they could. Comments on the site reveal that immediate deletion of files is par for rapidshare's course should anyone for any reason complain about content that has been uploaded to the service. You don't even have to be the origional owner of the intellectual property. Who the fuck wants to be the person that reminds the teacher they forgot to give homework? Apparently they're out there, and they hate MP3 blogs- just on principle. Fortunately, there is an oh so groovy alternative to these evil Germans.
* Multiply is a free (as of this writing) and nifty solution to hosting mp3s. With free unlimited storage space, no upload size limit (that I could detect) and a number of reasonably attractive templates to choose from, theres no reason why you shouldn't create an annex to your main blog as a way to save server space. Has pre defined catagories for music and pictures. Has an option that lets people play your entire playlist. Cures rickets and river blindness and is kind to dogs and babies. Also has a pleasing pine scent. Need I say more?