This episode is different from my usual 'casts.
If you've read the show notes at all, you know that I play a lot of music off the PMN (The Podsafe Music Network) because I don't want to get sued playing anything that could be in anyway be considered copyright theft.
But I ran into this application: "Democracy" from ParticipatoryCulture.org. (The links are all in the show notes, folks, all in the show notes.)
This is something that is just blowing me away.
It does for video what the internet, RSS and podcatching did for audio. (Think of the iTunesMusic Store on steroids and NOT needing a million bucks for the recording studio, equipment, transmitter, schedules and friggin' promotion "payola.")
I found two gems, both videos:
"Slip of the Tongue" which is very low cost, (the main set consists of a bus stop,) and
"Such Great Heights" which costs billions and billions (well not directly.)
Through a convoluted series of links followed and web sites visited, I ended up at SubPop Records which features some great artists and great tunes.
They also have their fair share of sub par artists and tunes, people who need a few more years of practice, honing their craft, but what of that.
As long as I'm going through the field and gleaning the wheat from the chaff for you, you don't have to suffer hearing it. I listened to EVERYTHING on offer. (My ears are still in shock.)
Why am I making this slip from strict legality?
Well I'm not. The site for SubPop has something in it that gave me the guts to try it..
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Question.
Dear Sub Pop, I was wondering if we could play (insert Sub Pop band here) or any of the songs readily available from your site on one of our up coming podcasts?
Answer.
While we're unable to give you blanket permission to use any ole song you want from our catalog, you may incorporate any of the songs that are freely available as MP3s in the multimedia section of this website http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/multimedia.php into your podcasts.
HOWEVER, we do reserve the right to change our mind about the availability of any song for any reason at any time. Fickle, no?
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Fickle, yes but its the right of the artist and the copyright holder to decide where their music goes.
And we're always going to be caught between the Scilla of the new music and the Charibdes of the back catalog.
But Hooray! They GOT it! They understand the power that 50 million plus iPods have on content, on advertising and on promotion. They got it.
The only thing that the PMN would offer is a way to track the music's percolation through podcasts and to quickly thank the artists.
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You're going to hear "The Postal Service" play "Such Greats Heights."
They also made a video of it.
The video takes place in a chip fab (or Wafer fabrication facility. There's less than 1,200 world-wide so I've got a short list of North American candidates to figure out which one was used.) Visually, it reminded me of THX-1138 and the Waldoes that Robert Duval was using to handle radioactive material.
Well we're about to desert the usual music.podshow.com format (though I'm going to have to work a lot harder to get in touch and thank the artists.)
Actually, there was enough material to make up this entire episode.
Lets take a listen, shall we?
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I'm still plugging The Crazy Chick blog. Its hotter than Hades in Jersey City so I cant imagine how how it must be where she is.
I'm still planning to go and get fed by the ChefsForMS. (What would you recommend for wines for a ship board dinner?)
I'm still following what's happening with Carlo Magno.
He need some road/theme music.
Like "St. Elmo's Fire" which was written for and/or about, I think I seem to remember, Rick Hansen, a Canadian wheel chair athlete injured falling off the back of a truck. (Man. Its not easy trying to dredge some of this stuff up out of my memory. It been almost 20 years since the "Man in Motion" world tour.)
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You can discover the most amazing things wandering our with your senses open.
In Wired (http://www.wired.com ) I stumbled over this blog entry:
Thursday, 27 July 2006
Destination: Out!
Topic: MP3s
Finally, the world has a free-jazz mp3blog! Seriously! It's called Destination: Out and it posts out-of-print music with informed, passionate writing alongside. This, and to a lesser extent Classical Connection (a [mostly avant-garde] classical mp3blog), is exactly what I hoped for when mp3blogs began to boom. People writing with excitement and verve about music I do not know and do not even entirely know how to love. And with samples alongside to help you listen for yourself! Bliss!
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I've got some more news about Ray Kurzweil in the Wall Street Journal. (Links in the show notes folks. Links in the show notes.)
He has come up with a portable text-to-speech device, which costs too much, but only for now.
It would be good for temporary sight problems, like people with MS sometimes get. Perhaps we should get some donated to each chapter for when their members need one. (Philanthropy anyone?) I'd buy one myself 'cause I love gadgets but my vision's been okay since 1985 and, knock wood, its a little to buy one juts or the WOW factor.
This next bit I picked up from some media my wife was watching. I don't even know which network, never mind which show. Somebody came up with a user-customizable Bliss-board.
http://www.blissymbolics.org/ says "bliss is a symbolic, graphical language that is currently composed of over 3,000 symbols. Bliss-characters can be combined and recombined in endless ways to create new symbols. Bliss-words can be sequenced to form many types of sentences, and express many grammatical capabilities. Simple shapes are used to keep the symbols easy and fast to draw."
FrogDesign have come up with something called BlinkTwice Tango. ( http://www.frogdesign.com/?p=9 ).
Its cute, like all FrogDesign stuff, customizable, and not massive like static bliss board designs. It also has the ability to speak the bliss sequence of symbols so that a bliss user can communicate with a non-bliss-reading person.
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