MACHINA II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music?

Just chanced upon Puthali’s take on Apple and DRM. A good read, as most of us are as much confused as the next person on what’s a typical solution. We don’t wanna rip the musicians out and definitely want them to continue making good stuff by supporting em in any way we can, don’t we? But it’s also a fact, the more the industry insists on putting restriction on what we do with the stuff we paid for, the more we turn to alternatives. Carla Schroder in her article Bah humbug commercial radio, hurrah for Internet radio summed it up as following…

These are very strange times we live in, where the big entertainment companies treat us like enemies for wanting to be their customers, and god forbid they should deliver something we actually want. Hurrah for the Internet, the great leveler. Buhbye big globalcorps, you’re on the path to becoming big globalcorpses, and I am not sorry.

A typical Schroder article full of word play and good humor. Am I the only one who thinks it’s funny with MPAA and RIAA joining hands and launching a Web site to project themselves in short as MAFIAA? So, they have an inkling that people consider their motives to the likes of mafias? Then I must say, good job folks over at both the institutions!

Years ago, when I discovered the deal with Creative Commons after reading Niyam Bhushan’s column in LFY mentioning the same, I chanced upon an interview on the site featuring Scott Andrew. I like his stuff. Have downloaded all of his songs from his site, and havent paid him any cash in exchange for it. Maybe I’ll buy his next album, maybe not. But I sure have nagged Robin to death, who also lives in the Seattle area, to check Scott out time and again.

Anyway, what Scott wrote soon after in a blog entry here (googled it out while commenting on Puthali’s entry, and thus read it again today after a couple of years) made a lot of sense from an indipendent musicians’ perspective. But what about the major label artists, who for a change make good music or the old ones whose stuff are owned by major lables, and they dont even care releasing 90% of the stuff here? File sharing at least makes those stuff accissible and I say the lables should shut up until they make all the stuff we need available in a city we live in, wherever it is. What’s worse for an artist: people not discovering him/her ever cuz the TV/radio never broadcast their stuff or getting it from p2p and then goin all ga ga if we happen to like what we’re hearing? The bad part is both ways artists dont get a penny for their work, however, while in the former case we dont even know they exist, in the later case we like their stuff. Maybe someday the mainstream musicians would like to answear that. Adios!!

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She’d love to drive you insane…

@ WBOS EarthFest (Boston MA) – May 26, 2007.
photo by Brian Silverstein / SilverShots.com [used w/o permission]

Oi she’s still around huh? Cooool!! I discovered her on download.com’s music section a couple of yrs back — she’s probably the featured artist that week. However, Stronger and such were available from download.com way back in 2004, so where’s the new music? And why they hell every other musician has to go to iTunes to sell their music? Pretty sucky, eh? Oh well, if u like acoustic folkish stuff, u might as well like her. Adios!!

UPDATE (2006-12-18): The above linked song, Stronger, is a different version than the one I initially downloaded from here a couple of years back. That one was an all-acoustic song. The new remixed version, available in her latest EP that you can also download from her Web site, is just another mainstream-sounding crap. It’s a pity how the producers make a mess in order to appeal to the mainstream culture. So, what was lost in the procedure is her passionate voice that made me a fan initially. Unfortunately, the acoustic demo version of Stronger — my Mieka Pauley favorite — has been taken offline from download.com too. I mean alright she has to make a living by selling her music in places like iTunes, but thats no excuse to compromise just so she’s more widely accepted by ditching the ones who loved her music initially.

Update (2007/07/29): The previously linked photo was removed from the Mieka’s Web site, so linked a new one here.   

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Wake Up…

Some of these female singer/songwriters from the 90s used to make good music. Guess it took just one song on the radio to get into them such as Alanis Morissette’s Hand In My Pocket, or Shawn Colvin’s Sunny Came Home, or even Jewel’s Hands.

Or you know the ones on the Hard Rock Cafe Live show (at 2300 hrs on TNT, every Saturday night) with Melissa Etheridge, whose albums I couldn’t ever find in stores. This specific show was rather good and many of the performers were those I’ve never heard of before — like Bush, and many others whose names I don’t even remember now. Whatever happened to the radio and TV shows? Now listening to albums like Jagged Little Pill reminds me of those shows.

The radio shows that I used to listen to was this one every morning at 8am and this female jockey was rather good as she would tell us about the albums and things related to the song or even her own personal recollections. Then the evenings were good too. And yes of course there was this Wicked Hour Show. What happened to those shows and those programs is what I wonder now after six years. First it was the TV that got corrupted with MTV Most Wanted hosted by that idiot VJ we had named Shehnaz. Yea, so I liked Maria and Mini Mathur, but they were at least fun and smart. Shehnaz was just plain dumb and irritating. Maybe Most Wanted should never had got rid of Rahul Khanna? OK, he hosted that show when I was like in 6th grade or somethin and I probably don’t even remember whatever he talked about and the songs he played. Then the show that followed at 6pm had this real cool and funny VJ. I’m not sure if it was on [V] or MTV. But I remember there was this one time, thats when the Val Kilmer movie Saint was released… and he kept raising his eyebrows to some background sound pretending to be the Saint.

Anyway, probably they were also just pretty faces, but at least they knew music. Then came Shehnaz, Peeya and the rest of the gang who were just plain DUMB. Meanwhile, the radio was still airing variety and it had intelligent people hosting the shows. Well, until 12th grade at least cuz after that I moved to Kolkata. And to be honest for a city that has so many musicians and stuff like that, the radio was total crap. But that wasn’t the worst part. To my surprise when I moved back here after three years, the radio that I remembered had transformed into something of a Hit Machine. So rather than play new or just variety stuff, it only played the same big hits throughout the day. Obviously, most of the old jockeys had left too by then to be filled in by the dumb-asses. And maybe that’s why we’re now surrounded by a generation of so-called music lovers who depend on the media to tell them what they should be listening to rather than make their own fuckin minds. And thus we have folks who are pretty pathetically Shehnaz*ified.

Anyway, so what do you say when you chance up on this co-worker, who just grabs your mp3 player and puts it on asking what the hell she is listening to? So, I reply…

Tool.

What?

It’s a band called Tool… the album is from the mid 90s…

Don’t you have any decent metal in it?

Like what?

umm… like Metallica, or Linken Park?

Don’t really listen to em much.

But you should. They are so popular. I love them. They are just so popular, you know?

OK

Yeah, like nobody listens to Tool. Who listens to Tool?

I need to care? What do u listen to?

You know good bands like Guns N’ Roses, Pink Floyd, and you know…. yes, like I said Metallica and Linken Park.

You like Floyd??

Yes, I love em. You know they are like so popular.

OK

So, maybe those aren’t the exact words. But she was so stuck on that “popular” word that she didn’t even think of needing to provide any other reason for liking those bands. Not that I believe Tool is like the ultimate band there is, but I was listening to them a lot last year around this time, and incidentally AEnima was in my player that day on me way back home.

Anyway, this girl, who was also a sub and had joined a couple of weeks before me, and I hardly ever conversed. But discovering someone I never thought of digs Floyd should have got me excited only to be put off by the word “popular” repeated to many times to justify what she listened to. I dunno how old she was — probably my age or a bit younger — and I have no clue since when is Floyd a popular band around here, apart from the university campuses probably. But there she was digging Floyd and probably only cuz they were supposed to be “popular”. Oh well, good to know that. See ya around. Adios!!

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Tommy can ya hear me?

Tomboy is good fun! Today while searching for this thingy in it came across the following… 

Due to the fact that the Microsoft server administrators have to recover from crashes weekly, they are much faster that the Linux server admins who have a hard time remembering what to do after long vacations due to lack of administration needed. – Gunman67

Dunno from where I lifted that, but it’s funny. So, u can bet ur ass how GNU/Linux admins aren’t really worth ur penny if u wanna spend money wisely enough that is.

So anyway, to begin with the real important stuff I wanted to talk about: Whatever happened to KG, man? I sorta remembered KG while thinking about something else I can’t really remember. One of KG’s family friends I met in one his cousin’s wedding thingy was this real hot chick (guess that sorta got me excited about remembering KG to begin with?). Now, this hot chick (whatever was her freaking name) was like different than the rest of the bimbos who also quality for the hot-chick crown for the fact that she’s also sorta cool in a way. She acted like boys, only she had long (I mean real long) hair. What’s up with that? That surely disqualifies her as a tomboy for sure. Plus she was wearing this saree thingy. What kinda wanna-be tomboy wears sarees, irrespective of the fact it was at the event of a wedding thingy and all? But she was hot (umm… cool) alright! I mean u know how I’m always uncomfortable with chicks around cuz I never really know what to talk about and wish they’d all just disappear outta thin air or somethin (that usually goes to most of the boys too). But this one was ok to talk to. OK! She’s damn ok to talk to. How about that? Well, fine, she was awesome to talk to irrespective of the fact she had reeeeal long, shiny, straight hair and all. Now, if only I could remember what the hell we actually talked about. I also can’t remember why the hell she was talking to me to begin with. I mean there were obviously some good-looking blokes around and add to that the fact she’s actually taller then me, why the hell was she talking to me anyway? It was the summer of 2002, so I was definitely not into Free Software but rather my only obsession back then was Floyd. I also used to dig W. Axl Rose big time (cuz everyone seemed to hate him?) Anyway, I bet I wont talk to a hot-looking chick (who’s also rather cool) and flaunt my wisdom by saying how I think Waters is the best songwriter ever and stuff like that. Hmm… whatever’s up with that… Oh yeah, her name was Rangoli (what kinda freaking name is that for a hot chick who’s also rather cool?).

Anyway, so it was. I wonder what KG’s been up to? Or maybe he’s one of those Ph.D guys by now? I wont be surprised if that’s what he is now. I mean he was like those booky-types who always crib how they hate whatever subject(s) they are specializing in. But so was KG. You can ask any of those three jerks I’m still in contacts with from school and they’ll all have to say the same shit about KG. The chicks might add KG was cute and all (yea rite, they can share the desk with KG for a 45-minute class and listen to him crib about all things known to us species, and then we’ll talk about how cute he was). I mean KG was weird. You know those mechanical drawing classes? He’d take out the board, clip on the sheet, fix the drafter, umm… ok no more commas necessary. That’s all he’d do. For the rest of the class, he’d just sit idly and talk all sorts of crap things. I mean he was so good at it, he could beat me flat-out when it comes to talking crap. Even Bal and Debs, man. He was that good at it. When I come to think of it Bal occupied the desk behind us and pretended to work oh-so-hard. Dunno why tho, cuz Suchos (his then girl) was in a different section. So who the hell was he trying to impress?

So anyway, forget and forgive fuck I’m outta hear already. I’ve a life you know, so I need to figure the deal with this thing they call NIS, whatever the fuck that does. Adios!!

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Take Cover

…and the Silliest Article of the Year award goes to James V. Delong for writing the best possible article ever to be nominated for this specific category. And he’d like to thank his parents and the publishing company for this terrific mind-blowingly-surprising honor. Adios!!