Before my trip I made sure to get three anticipated singer-songwriter countryesque records to spend some quality time with, Journeyman's Wager by Chuck Mead (singer of BR549), Everything you Love Will Be Taken Away by Slaid Cleaves and Beautiful Day by Charlie Robison. After listening to each of them about ten times over a month .... well, I don't have much to say. I can remember the song titles of about two tracks from each, and fewer lyrics or hooks. Journeyman's Wager is the one I feel I should give another shot, there are some catchy up tempo acoustic countrybilly tracks on that one -- such as I Wish it Was Friday. Can't argue with the sentiment anyhow.

I will recommend Dirt Town City Limits by Mat d and the Profane Saints. Jim Pipkin does a great job reviewing it at Hickory Wind, and I'm grateful he pointed out. I haven't got the CD yet -- I will when it gets added to CD Baby -- but I love the tracks on the website. i got Mat d.'s solo record Gasoline Rattle which i also enjoy but I really love the fullm on full band sound on this new one. Check it out!

Of other new records, I listened on rotation all weekend to Quantic and his Combo Barbaro's Traditions in Transition. Quantic is a ackshully a lad from Worcestershire named Will Holland who for many years has been exploring eclectic nooks and crannies of funk and soul under various names and combinations of musos. A few years ago the record the Quantic Soul Orchestra did with singer Spanky Wilson was scorching.

On Traditions in Transition he takes on Latin sounds, and it was recorded in Cali, Colombia with various big names of the genre. It traverses a lot of styles but I like his stuff because it never feels like a dilletante wunderkind dabbling in something exotic, even when there are some subtle hiphop beats under a track it all feels loved. Some are more funky, some dreamier, some more traditional ballroom style Latin, some vocals and some instrumentals, there is even an Indian (as in the sub continent) influence, but all pretty hot.

Apart from that my favourite record at the moment is the Blind Faith album, the one with the Bill Henson-esque cover! I went download shopping for Derek and the Dominoes (after watching this) but Blind Faith was cheaper. All those EC super groups sound the same anyway.

So after the intial bafflement I got over the eMusic plan changes and was going to hang around, and make a conscious effort to channel the higher per track payments to labels/artists I wanted to support. But then a bigger problem came down the pipe: "in the near future" access to eMusic will be blocked entirely for users outside the USA. Canada, UK and EU. Entirely! Certain labels/albums are already unavailable on a country by country basis. This is a familiar message:

But this change would exclude us entirely.

And so eMusic joins Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, Napster, Lala, Spotify and countless other digital download and streaming services off-limits to us. Now, eMusic do say that exisiting customers will be "grandfathered in" (see FAQ) although of course that's what they said about my current subscription plan, which they just changed. And the grandfathering actually annoys me more, because it suggests the geographic restrictions are not enforceable law, but a voluntary policy decision in deference to their new BFFs at Sony, and future majors they hope to land. If you are doing something illegal and are a company, you don't say "oh well, "in the near future" we will stop doing illegal stuff but people already doing illegal stuff can keep on doing it."

I can go to Amazon.com right now and buy any CD I want and ship it here. But I cannot buy the same album in digital form from the Amazon MP3 Store. How does this make any sort of sense?

I have questions about it logged with customer service, i doubt I'll get a decent answer. Googling the issue of geographic distribution doesn't bring much helpful up.

So now I'm thinking I will just quit eMusic altogether because of it even though I would be grandfathered in, the whole thing leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. It is no different than DRM to me, right now. What was the point of being so visionary and courageous over DRM for so long, only to capitualte in 2009 with rubbish like this? Should've slapped DRM on the tracks back in '02 and you could've had Sony then.

I see that Sony Australia has its own digital download store, called with a rather hilarious lack of irony bandit.fm. There are some positives about it at first glance, I can actually use it on a Mac, no-DRM MP3s and 320kps (although I'm fine with lower bitrates.) The content appears to be more than Sony stuff, the Blue Note label is there and that's owned by EMI. The artist and genre pages are attractively presented and easy to navigate.

However. I put in the last 10 or so albums I dl'd from eMusic and they had none of them. They had a few of the artists, but not the same albums. I conclude they have no independent labels at all. If someone did an album for Chess it's there because the Chess catalogue is now owned by Universal, but later, say, Alligator recordings by same artist are absent. They are more expensive than iTunes on some albums, and iTunes has a much bigger selection. And for a couple of them I know for a fact I can go to JB Hi Fi today and buy the hard copy cheaper.

Is this where Sony is hoping to channel my money by excluding me from eMusic? Tell 'em they're dreaming.

Shorter Bloke Who Prob Got His Ticket For Free: Eric Clapton should tailor his show much more to people who don't really like him much.

Props to my Twitter peep who suggests George just stick to Blueshammer.

Leonard Cohen ticket buying expedition FAIL.

There's this new show, see, on Ch.7 tomorrow night at 7.30pm The One: Search for Australia's Top Cold Reader Psychic. I've attended a few of the studio tapings on account of a good friend of mine, Richard Saunders, is one of the judges. I met Richard through the Australian Skeptics and he has taken on the daunting task of being commercial TV token skeptical whipping boy for low rent reality show. Go, Richard! Join our Richard Saunders Fans Facebook page! So I am in the audience for episodes 2 and 4 and watched episode 5 filming from the green room and back of the studio yesterday.

Richard has done an excellent job with a very tough gig, and has managed to institute a few extra controls on the "tests" although even with that they barely rise above parlour game level (except for one which is just deeply full of FAIL on the crass test.) And yes there's a legitimate discussion to be had about doing more harm than good in legitimising the mystery-monging but these shows are going to happen anyway and in Richard they actually had someone capable of, under pressure, quickly breaking down what was happening and really revealing the workings of cold reading on the spot. Of course he only gets a few lines and the vast bulk of logical fallacies, utter non-sequiturs, post-hoc rationalisations and face-palm moments have to go unchallenged. But the lines he gets are good, although its all in the editing, I guess. I took lots of notes in the last two sessions I was at so I might make further comment once I see the edited version. Podblack blog has made a loose comment about live blooging the first show. I hope she does, that should be fun.

I didn't take any of Skeptico's Cold Reading Bingo cards but perhaps you can print out some to play along at home. I guarantee you odds vastly better than the local Lions club version. You can't lose, in fact.

In my time there I saw lots of readings and "challenges" but not a single inexplicable or even particularly impressive thing, I did see a lot of the standard psychological techniques done to varying degrees of inexpertness and the glorious laws of probability at work. Which doesn't mean it won't "make good TV." It was interesting although LONG to sit through an entire day of faffing about for a few minutes of film. That's the glamour of showbiz I guess.

On the other end of the scale of seriousness I've been reading Ray Hyman's The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research and it comes highly recommended.

Here in full is the 2/5 stars "review" by Bernard Zuel of Hayes Carll's "Trouble in Mind" from the Metro this morning:

You can see the attraction for the label. Here's someone who can be a lightweight-but-far-less-troublemaking cross between Ryan Adams and Steve Earle, with alcohol-soaked ballads and punchy mid-tempo country rock. It's easy to digest and has more grit than the Nashville-Tamworth axis but the trouble is when you take away the "troublesome" parts of Adams and Earle, you get by-the-numbers-alt.country.

The SMH reviewers, including BZ, generally do a good job in giving coverage to Music I Like and props to them for it, but I have a serious pet hate about their some of their critical MO. Namely: The constant and utterly unnecessary relating of everything slightly rootys to top 40 country and taking up space with irrelevant comparisons instead of talking about the music. In his excellent jazz reviews, John Shand never feels moved to mention that Mike Nock is not like Kenny G, but the blokes on the country/folk beat can't resist but shoehorn a reference to Keith Urban into damn near everything. Long time readers know I have ranted about this before. End the country critical cultural cringe!

I like this record (review coming this weekend) and he doesn't: fine, I'm not talking about that. The Adams/Earle comparisons while on the surface more appropos than Urban are misplaced too. Firstly, talk about the damn record. You've got about 50 words, why waste two of them on "Ryan" and "Adams", especially if you're not going to provide a meaningful comparison for potential purchasers? Hayes Carll is really very little like Ryan Adams musically, even when Ryan was at his most country. It seems Ryan is only mentioned because he provides a drug abusing songwriter bookend to the Earle reference which is more fitting, but still a waste of precious words. Why are we even mentioning drug abuse again? Ugh, who the hell knows.

Secondly, I strongly doubt the stated motivations apply to Lost Highway. It's just another the imposition of a random narrative that suits a lazy journo. (cf. the political op-ed columns every day of the week.) The easy-too-see attraction for the label is not that he isn't an vainglorious junkie, it is that he had already released a couple of critically acclaimed, award winning and successful Americana records and something of a reputation for being a genuine heir to the Texas country/folk songwriter tradition of Townes Van Zandt. These are the qualities that drew me to Hayes Carll three years ago.

If the new album doesn't live up to the promise, by all means say so. Don't just make shit up.

A further pet hate is the insidious definition creep of the term "alt.country." I see not the slightest reason to call Hayes Carll that, unless "alt.country" now simply means anything that doesn't chart on CMT and if that is what it now means then: over my dead body it does.

Blogspot's finest, Boney Earnest has done a superlative muxtape of rarities, love tracks and cover by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

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

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?

Bruce-phemy indeed.

This article was the pits when it was in the New York Times last week, it's even worse now the Herald has recycled it. The story? A couple of men in middle age had heart attacks and a computer geek eats junk food. I do think there are some interesting issues in the bizarro "professional" blogging world, this is a stupidly sensational hook for it.

That's Bad! Australia Post "loses" package. Must do over and resend.

That's Bad! Withdrawing $60 at ATM, forgetting to take the damn money and finding it gone when you return a minute later.

That's Bad! Letter re: rental increase.

That's Good! Another muxtape.

Thanks to Chris Bertram and Tim Dunlop for sending me this piece on the environmental movement, country music and class. That's like the Chris blogged it. Wouldn't it be fun if I had platoons of bat-winged monkeys like some other blogs who would hoon over there at my command. Mwuh-ha-ha. In a different week I might find something to say about it myself.

Am off to see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings tonight at the Enmore. In the Dance-2 section, say hi. I will be the one not dancing. Hopefully I can get some far away blurry shots mostly of people's heads (there's a Dance-1 section) to put up later.

I may be able to tie the two themes of this post in one Sharon Jones song:

07 This Land Is Your Land.mp3

Crossposted at Hickory Wind.

This post goes on, like a certain essential muscular organ of some musical fame. In the knowledge clicking on is too much trouble for many, here is your take home message: There is a book called Céline Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson, part of the Continuum 33 1/3 Series. You want to read this book. His blog is here, one of my favourites for years. Here are lots of reviews and interviews. AFAIK it isn't released in Australia so you can buy it here. If you buy me a glass of house red I will lend it to you, I will probably be too-aggressively pimping it to you even if you don't. You want to read this book.

You want to read this book.

Got it? Ah, but I have trapped you because now you want to know why you want to read a book on Céline Motherfrakinggoddamnareyougoddamnfrakkingkiddingme Dion. Sucked in. Onwards over the fold ...

Washington Square Serenade was utterly forgettable, but I guess I'm still happy for old Steve he won a Grammy tonight. Stacy has all the other important winners and the chumps they beat.

Update: Sure the Grammy suck in the actual-who-they-give-awards-to part. I'm watching the show now, FF'ing through most of BUT there are cool bits:

The Band being given the Lifetime Achievement Award. (shot of Robbie. No Levon.)

TINA TURNER. Look Beyonce is hawt undoubtably and definately talented and I've nothing against her but her part of the stage is maybe Top 24 elimination ep of Idol and the other part of the stage is TINA TURNER.

Oh wow, Andy Williams. Did you know that at My Olde Blog probably the most visited page was this post on Claudine Longet? HELL of a LOT of people Google "Sp**** Sa****"" every day. I can't even type his name because I don't want them to find me here too.

Brad Paisley. He's OK, as far as they go, but his song is so unbelievably skeevy and Brad is too nice to pull it off. It's so weird. How can you even sing it? Effing TICKS? NO. Just NO.

ARETHA FRANKLIN
ARETHA FRANKLIN
ARETHA FRANKLIN

Carole King and Dierks Bentley tributing Earl Scruggs!!

Joe Mantegna! It's immature I know, but I wanted him to say "Max Roach, he sleeps with da fishes."

Amy Winehouse's mum is so cute!

Trustees Awards: people we have never heard of, we totally salute you!

Montage of dead people: Full marks for muting the sound on the applause. At the Oscars, some people get only a sprinkling of polite clapping and the real famous deceased get a massive thunderous reception. It's kind of real tacky and embarrassing to watch. Either everyone gets non-half hearted applause, or everyone gets a generic swirl of made-for-TV movie overture music. That's how it should be. Well played, Grammys. Oh wait, I hear some muffled applause now. Bastards.

BONNIE RAITT!

LITTLE RICHARD AND JERRY LEE LEWIS!!!! and John Fogerty. I'd like to dislike Jerry Lee, but shucks, I just can't. Ha ha, Little Richard is so insane. Amy Winehouse, you pathetic vanilla amateur, are you taking notes? Is Fogerty's guitar even plugged in?

oh Quincy Jones. Yeah! OK, Herbie and etc winning Album of the Year is very cool.

Hey wait. That's it? No Steve Ealre, no Levon, no Terrance Simian, not even even Eric freaking Clapton? NO BRUCE?

Grammys telecast: you suck.

"Legendary [sic] Singer-Songwriter Arlo Guthrie Endorses Ron Paul for President."