Testing new anti-spam strategies. Apologies if it doesn't work and some of the junk ends up in comments. Experimenting with turning off moderation ...

A box of 'em. $2 each. Yank their arm and they shriek. If they're all here, who's minding teh internet?

I'm back on the right side of the digital divide. To celebrate, I did a new muxtape just of stuff I listened to in my first couple of hours of plugging the thing in. The opening song is a Mexican cover of Quinn the Eskimo.

That is all I want to say about anything.

I'm going to see that Anita O'Day doco at the Sydney Film Festival this Sunday so check out some classic Anita at the Newport Folk Fest 1958:

Comment moderation is still on so please continue to leave comments but be patient about them appearing -- especially over the weekend as I am still without my beloved Mac at home. ;-( Most of my music listening is done via the computer, either the digital files or the inbuilt CD. Without it, the only CD player I have is the DVD which I haven't tried but I don't expect the TV speaker quality to be that great. I'm still going to try and pick up the new Emmylou Harris record today or tomorrow. Particularly keen to hear her version of Old Five and Dimers Like Me, one of the great country songs. I've also heard good things about the new Al Green record.

Go Socceroos! and hope you all have a good weekend.

I'm back, but you didn't even know I was gone. Been unable to log into Movable Type since Thursday, but finally the long blogial nightmare is at an end. I feel like James Stewart at the end of It's A Wonderful Life, running through the streets of Bedford Falls.

This made me laugh.

However, I no longer have a working computer and since pretty much all my music is on my computer ... sigh.

So I have done a stupid meme instead. This is called Your Debut CD I got it off the Whirlpool forums.

1. Go to Wikipedia random page. The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2. Go to Random quotations.
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3. Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days"
Middle picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

My Band: Claribel Alegría
My Album Title: Liberties than standing armies.
Album Cover: Cool pic but a bit tween punk album-cover wise.

Have at it yourself. Or not.

The band title/album is very post-rock. I don't do "post-rock." A friend once tried hard to get me into Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sigur Ros, all that stuff. Didn't take. At all. Write some godamn melodies, why don't you. And get to them in under 15 minutes. I'm doing a Schembri I realise. Shame on me.

But, I don't do post-rock. Pre-rock, of course. Peri-rock, always. There is nothing post-rock for me.

Apologies to anyone and everyone who got a spam email from my personal Gmail account this morning. That is, everyone I've ever had email contact with in three years of using it because Gmail stores 'em all. I have Googled (irony) about the problem and there are conflicting reports of cause and what can be done. Well, the cause of course is the EVIL that lurks in the breasts of men and the CONTEMPTIBLE RAT FRACKING BASTARDS who waste their precious time on Earth with this EVIL RANCID EVIL BULLSHIT.

I have done what I can to eliminate the risk of further hijacking, which included deleting my entire Contacts list. Which I did in a fit of panic and raging fury before saving the actual addresses so now I can't actually email many people individually to apologise. Le fracking sigh. Moderation of comments is still on here because of spam and all up I would like to do violence violently to someone. Many people, preferably.

If you were affected, I apologise.

that someone wishes to comment, note I have turned on moderation because of Teh Spam. I'll be around all day so real folks will be approved swiftly and if this evil wave of evil-doing evility passes I'll open it back up entirely ASAP.

Bumping this to the top because it is tonight. There's also a thingo in the paper about it, scroll half way down the page.

I can't believe it is that time of year again, but it is. From 9pm to 2am on this Saturday night, it coincides this year with His actual birthday. After 10pm it will be syndicated on the community radio network so people outside Sydney can tune in. The website has live streaming, don't know if it will apply for this show but you can always try.

I've seen the runnling list and there's some awesome music, everyone's faves plus rare stuff, and snippets including bits from Theme Time Radio Hour and recent Dylan-related interviews hosted by Patti Smith. I'll be on after 10 to talk about I'm Not There. Plus: giveaways.

Reminder too about the monthly get togethers -- I haven't updated it with next month's date yet but will do that, uh, today sometime. Anyway the next one is 16th June.

Subject line stolen from Phineas. It is too good not to be mine. Mux had a meltdown and my most recent one was lost. But it only nuked the last three weeks of stuff which means my last second account mux is still there. Second accounts breach the TOS, so hush. IMHO, it's rather a tasty collection of country, soul, funk -- old skool, yo.

Hey so this is how people make money from those Amazon affiliate things, huh? Too late, as usual! I'm pleased to say first Shaun and now FXH succumbed to my amateur mesmerism attempts and bought and read/are reading Celine Dion: Let's Talk about Love by Carl Wilson.

I did have a whole muxtape playlist lined up to go with the State of Origin ("You Don't Know How Much I Hate You" by Rodney Crowell etc etc) but then I accidentally deleted it so ... bad luck. The replacement is just one song from the last 12 albums I listened to:

"Live Your Life" - Recapturing the Banjo. Everything Otis Taylor does is interesting. Here is with a bunch of bluesy guys reclaiming the banjo.

"African Dialects" - Peter King Nigeria 70, Lagos Jump I got this digitally but I really want the liner notes.

"A Grand Night for Swinging" - Mary Lou Williams A Grand Night for Swinging "probably the most influential woman in the history of jazz"

"Busted" - Maceo Parker Roots and Grooves Only the first disc thus far, which is Maceo doing Ray Charles. The second is his own stuff, which I look forward to.

"Some Kind of Kindness" - Firewater The Golden Hour Phineas has a real thing for them so I thought I'd humour him. Do not know what I think yet. PS, buy his new print. Then you can be as cool as me.

"Reaching" - Famous L. Renfroe Children Long lost and strange gospel soul that showed up on eMusic.

"Our Time" - John Hiatt Same Old Man Well you know I've been waiting for this one. I won't say much because I'd like to write something longer. But this song grabbed me first up.

"Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" - Hayes Carll Trouble in Mind Ditto, won't say much now but it's great.

"Oh How to Do Now" - The Monks The Monks The Monks are one of those cult 60s bands. Formed from GIs in Germany. Nice fun fuzzy gonzo rock and roll.

"Need Someone to Hold" - Creedence Clearwater Revival Creedence Country

Brahms: Sonate Für Klarinette Und Klavier Es-Dur, Op. 120 Nr. 2: II. - Peter Daum, Dieter Klöcker, Josef Suk & Werner Genuit I read somewhere online that the second movement of Opus 40 here was some of the "saddest music ever." I like sad music. it's pretty sad but it's also over 10MB so this is another thingo from the same record.

"I Saw My Youth Today" - Richard Shindell Reunion Hill

Yes I know the cinematic remakes of beloved 80s TVs shows thing is getting old but I am totally on board with this.

Somewhat busy, but today is traditonally* the day for a new Muxtape. Have no great plans as yet, but if you have a request for a genre or theme or something you'd like to hear my take on leave a comment with your suggestion!

* it must be a month by now.

The following is mostly a plea to Zoe on account of her awesome new food blog.

I had seen a few references to The Paper around the innertubes in the last few days and thought: weird. The Michael Keaton movie? Weird. If any of 1994s cineofferings was going to make a comeback to the zeitgeist, you'd think it'd be The River Wild. But then I read some recommendations of a couple of my favourite TV-related blogs (they both link to this) and I understood there was a new MTV reality series of that name. Of course it is not on telly here but of course I acquired it anyway. It follows the exploits of the Cypress Bay High (Florida) student newspaper. After the first minute I had to check Wikipedia to see that it was actually a reality show, so staged and scripted it seemed. But of course to a teenager in 2008 reality TV is so completely normal and even something to aspire to and we have reached the point where mock- has seamlessly cycled into doc- (umentary).

Mock will eat itself.

I don't require musicians I like to be rational, sane, compassionate, intelligent, thought provoking and in general good people. But it's awfully nice when one of them turns out to be so. The superb singer/songwriter Richard Shindell has some thoughts here and more here on being an artist in the age of illegal downloading. He speaks sense.

While I think a lot of anti-piracy measures and attitudes have been hamfisted, insulting and obnoxious (and I don't use P2P myself), I don't make my living from music so I can't begrudge those who do their strong feelings on the matter. Still, when he talks about the "better angels" attitude, and respect between consumer and artist, that makes sense to me. I think there are lots of things that can be done to turn pirates into people who support artists -- not least of which is "the passage of time" and "embiggening of musical tastes" since (IIRC) it's teens/uni-aged kids who do it on the grandest and most unthinking scale, and it's mostly directed towards the more top 100 end of things. eMusic's corporate line has long been that it pitches the long tail and independent acts to "mature" music fans who are vastly less likely to fileshare. This was actually borne out when Random House tracked piracy of it's eMusic DRM-free audiobook files and found ... none. (can't dig up the thing I read about this, will add link later.)

Richard still thinks it's important the artist gets paid (in this case, him) but he's actually doing some constructive, realistic things about it. Go, Richard!

Time for a new muxtape. Since Laura alerted me to this particularly witless example of crushingly unfunny and pointless op-ed busy work and since I got a few Google hits in the last week looking for a "jazz muxtape", I thought I'd do a jazz muxtape. And they say bloggers are undisciplined, narcasscistic jerks -- Schembri (practically everytime I read him) more than proves you don't need to be 13 and writing in your PJs in your mother's basement to write like you're 13 and writing in your PJs in your mother's basement.

Hear my muxtape here.

Anyhow. I'm very much a "don't know much about jazz, but I know what I like" and this is pretty much the first 12 things I came to, with some exceptions because a lot of tracks (ie. everything I have by Charles Mingus) is over the Muxtape limit of 10MB in size. Also kept it to instrumentals. Jazz vocals is a mux for another week.

These are the albums the tracks are from:
Robert Mazurek- Playground. This was recommended on a message board thread about "heroiny jazz."
Sonny Rollins-Way Out West "I'm an Old Cowhand" is my fave but I put that on a mux before.
Art Pepper-Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
Irving Fields Trio-Bagels and Bongos
Getatchew Mekurya-Negus of Ethiopian Sax. African jazz is a whole topic by itself.
John Coltrane-Plays for Lovers
Dizzy Gillespie and Machito-Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods
Andre Previn- West Side Story
Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins
Thelonious Monk - Blue Monk
Buddy Rich with Dizzy Gillespie-Monterey Jazz Festival 1958-1980
Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans-Know What I Mean?

I bought an eviiiil chocolate confectionary product -- which happened to have a Free iTunes Download promotion attached.

Leave a comment with the song you absolutely think I need to hear and I just might download it.

The African muxtape I raved about yesterday is gone. Such is the poignant fragility of the mux, mirroring perhaps our own fugacious existence in this vale of tears.

Same dude has a new mux though, of "contemporary rock songs from Houston."

Update: But. Here's an equally good one of Congolese music. Very informative notes here.