A new way to find new bands - Pandora

Click on the image for a larger view - I like the way it says that the Dirty Three use "extensive vamping".

Discover Music - Pandora - http://www.pandora.com

In my morning web meander, I came across this website - I'm not entirely sure who's behind it but it is rather interesting. It allows you to type in the name of a song or band/artist that you like and identifies their particular traits. From this, it suggests other songs/artists in a similar vein that you may or may not have heard of.

For example, typing in Nick Cave brought up the song Avalanche (all these songs play in full, by the way) and then went on to Aged Dolls by ...And you will know us by the trail of dead and from there to In Trance by Scorpions. From there to Secret Knowledge of Backroads by Pavement (interestingly one of the bands I kinda missed during the 90's - always had friends into them). What jail is like after that by Afghan Whigs.

Think I'm rather liking this.

By the way, according to the FAQ on the site, there are licensing issues for users outside the USA, so they have a field where people have to enter a zipcode - eg 90210 - my personal favourite.

One way ticket to Cheese

The new The Darkness album (One way ticket to Hell...and back) is out today and I'm sitting at my desk with all it's cheesy rock glory belting through the headphones as I type. (Not bad so far)

I'm thinking there's a fair chance a track or two might make it to air this arvo.

Losing my religion - NES style

Remember the original Nintendo Entertainment System (mid 80's) and the bloopy bleepy electronic soundtrack it gave to the games of the time. A group of musical geeks from somethingawful.com have sampled and synthesized the sound of the NES and used it to create covers of a bunch of popular tunes - including R.E.M's Losing my religion which is the one I'll be playing on the show today.

The full tracklisting is:
01 REM - Losing My Religion
02 Europe - Final Countdown
03 Radiohead - Karma Police
04 Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
05 Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
06 Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
07 Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
08 Led Zeppelin - Kashmir
09 Slayer - Angel of Death
10 David Pomeranz - Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now
11 Coldplay - Yellow
12 Rick James - Superfreak
13 Semisonic - Closing Time
14 (Silence)
15 Hidden NESmix Intro
16 Zero Wing (Opening Theme) (4x4 Remix)
17 Tetris (Music A) (Piano Practice)

You can download the lot as MP3 files from Something awful at http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3356

(It's a 67.8Mb file)

(I might just add that this does tend to grate after a while)

Today's tunes

Hello - bit of a new music in the selection today and a few faves from weeks gone by, hope you find some stuff that you like. Bit of a busy work day today so not so much time for chit chatting.

Kali-Fornia Uber Alles 21st Century Jello Biafra With The Melvins 3:19 Sieg Howdy!
Arse Grabbin' 2UP 3:42 Player's Club
Internal Combustion 2UP 5:09 Player's Club
The County Coal Harbour 4:01 Coal Harbour
Why Are You Leaving Burgers Of Beef 3:48 Satellite (EP)
Satellite Burgers Of Beef 3:28 Satellite (EP)
Whatcha drinkin tonight? The Speakeasies 4:13 Speaken Freely
Fresh bud The Speakeasies 4:03 Speaken Freely
Suffer Chaos Maths 3:13 Dope meaning good
Tribute To Disco The Floors 2:17 Borrowed
REM - Losing My Religion kalociN/moondabor 4:39 SA NEScover
Spanish Fly The Looks 3:13 Looks Like
Woman Wolfmother 2:55 Wolfmother
Fuck Forever Babyshambles 4:42 Fuck Forever
Hieronymus The Clouds 3:47 Penny Century
Heartstopper Emiliana Torrini 3:20 Heartstopper
Paycheques Tex, Don & Charlie 4:30 All Is Forgiven
Girl & the Sea The Presets 4:40 Kill Your Idols
Let It All Turn Black Sodastream 3:57 Take Me With You When You Go
Frequency Sounds Like Sunset 3:50 Invisible

Mr Soul Neil Young 3:54
Spiritual Johnny Cash 5:07
Evil (Steve Miller) Lisa Miller 4:31
Stone thrown Turin Brakes 4:04
Flite The Cinematic Orchestra 6:35
Blue Stranger Beasts of Bourbon 4:12
Anni Rose Tulku 4:17
Baby, you're a strange girl Gersey 5:56
Still the same Tex, Don and Charlie 3:17
Climbing to the moon Eels 3:38
I was made for loving you Queen of Japan 2:01
Original oddstep Vert 5:30
Blues team Underground Lovers 2:32
The Gospel according to Tony Day Edwyn Collins 3:27
Kelly watch the stars Air 3:46
Roaring days Weddings, Parties, Everything 2:43
He water moves Karma County 5:20
across the universe Rufus Wainwright 4:09

Classic Claustrophobia at Bernadette's - review

Popped up to Bernadette's in Ainslie last night for a spot of dinner theatre with the 3 hand play Classic Claustrophobia.

(Not sure why I used that term, it seems to come up fairly regularly on the Simpsons and always seems kind of amusing - and in truth, there was both theatre and dinner so maybe it's not so bad)
Anyways, the deal is that you get a set menu and the show for $33. The food was the usual top-notch vego fair that Bernadette's does so well - starting out with a platter of nibbles - dips, bread, olives, mushrooms, spinach leaves, bean sprouts and so on and then moving on to a couple of different offerings in the pizza dept - the mexicana type one and the one with pumpkins and caramelised onions.

Once dinner is finished up (and I should mention that the place was packed, so it takes a little while but with good company and a drink or two the time flies by) it's on with the show.

Classic Claustrophobia makes intelligent use of the limited space on offer by setting the action in a lift, stuck between floors in an office building. It's written by first time writer Jenny Rixon, who along with Tania Bunk and Kerrie Roberts put on a warm and enthusiastic performance as three women with little to do but wait, chat and unearth the odd skeleton in the closet.

The themes covered are fairly classic and often seemed to hit the right chord with the (largely female) audience. It was certainly very much a woman's thing but the vast majority of the humour worked for me as well (as a guy). (I kind of feel like I'm overemphasising this element a bit much - trust me that there was a lot of other stuff going on as well and some nice comedy business throughout)

The story moves along nicely, possibly just hurried a little early on in setting up the essential conflict of the thing before it finds its natural rhythm. (I'm making a big effort here not to do the spoilers thing so excuse the scant detail on what actually happens but I think it's usually best to go into things not knowing too much).

It only occasionally dips into stereotypes (though is it just me or do almost all stories involving people stuck in a lift (or anywhere really) have a pregnant woman in them) to take a interesting and definitely amusing look at the lives and loves of women with a thing or two in common. (And as I say, as a guy I think some things may have slipped through to the keeper - there were certainly more than a few bursts of laughter from the women in the room that I think I missed)

Well worth checking out for a good night out - Rozzi, the new owner of Bernadette's has a bit of a grand plan for the restaurant (while holding fast to all the things that have made this place the local institution that it is) and putting in some theatre certainly seems to have paid off.

There are still a few shows left - a matinee (with afternoon tea) on Sunday the 27th and a dinner and show on the 30th and the 1st. Contact the restaurant on 6248 5018 for tix.

Let them sing it for you

Let them sing it for you

Ooh, been having a bit of fun with this site - http://www.sr.se/P1/src/sing/index.htm?key=F35EZ2MZ#

It allows you to type in text and then creates a sound file that uses grabs (generally one word or less) of common songs to create a cut and paste audio version. (And yes, in case you're wondering, it also features a reasonable range of swear words).

From here, you can send the audio file to your email address - though it hasn't made it to my inbox yet (about 10 mins after sending)

If there's a word missing from the vocabulary, there's an option to contact the creators of the site and let them know where they might find a word in a song.

Update
Just got the email I sent myself from this site - it doesn't send a sound file, just a like to your "song" on the site. I'll keep investigating the possibility of recording this however, there must be some software out there that'll do it.

New tunes - 2up Players club

Haven't had much to say about new music of late - though I'll update that shortly - but I do have to give props (sorry, couldn't resist) to the new 2Up album - Players Club.

There's something I'm really growing to love about Oz hiphop (and 2Up in particular), the sense of humour and self depreciation combined great local cultural references - "phat like Toadie from Neighbours", " get you saying Yeah Yeah like Greg Mathews" and just some generally great wordsmithing - "bad to the bone like osteoporosis". The djing behind is great as well, with some great unexpected stings and samples - including the 'O-face' guy from Office Space.
(And I'll never hear the "That's what I want" promo at the movies in the same way again :)

I got the cd at JB Hifi, which apparently is the way to go as they have some deal sorted out where you get a bonus disk at this place - which is essentially the instrumental backing of the main cd.

Enjoy.

Bleh - sick day

I feel worse than I look - and from this pic, that's saying something :)

Well I'm not sure if it's the change of weather or poor diet or perhaps the late night game of strip dj :) but I woke up yesterday with that shaky, achey, hot, weak, trembly, crappy feeling that you get when you know the sickness is just kicking in. And here it is.

Off work today and sadly unable to head in to do the show this arvo, so I guess you'll have to dig into your own collections to thrash Belle and Sebastian to death this week.

Many thanks to the always fantastic Sylvie at the station for lining up Lexie to do the show this arvo - apparently we have a couple of hours of very cool electronica to ease the pain of my absence instead. Thanks Lexie.

On a separate thing, I'm continuing my love/hate relationship with Sony this week - picked up a rather snazzy digital camera (yeah, bit late coming to the party there but worth the wait) which means I can actually put my pic up. It ain't pretty but it's all I got :)

I've also continued my illicit affair with Amazon - damn their hides - getting my latest order through, a couple of books on Machinima (which is really cool in it's own right - essentially using computer games to make short movies - possibly the most famous or best being Red Vs Blue, which is based on Halo.



Also got a couple of books by Jon Stewart, of the (now defunct) Daily Show - which was screened on SBS there for a while. Lots of pointed political humour - and in a world like this, who doesn't need to be able to laugh at things a little.

This is your brain....

This is your brain on drugs (Bill Hicks fans and followers of US pop culture will know what I'm on about here :)

My friend (heck, one of my best friends ever and all-time favourite exes) Sasha just told me that reading this blog was like looking directly into my mind. Thanks - I think.

I've been wondering whether I should have more rants in this thing - as opposed to pointing at the shiny things I find online and saying - hey, check this out.

Still working this all out really - I guess it is about having my say to an extent but also about sharing, the reason I like doing the radio thing in the first place. In spite of appearances to the contrary, I guess I've always been pretty reserved with the things I share - not just from shyness, sometimes just from living in my own little world :) - haven't even finished filling out the profile for this blog yet.

The way the web is going now though seems to be very much about sharing (ok, moreso now than ever) with this whole Web 2.0 thing and surely this can only be a good thing. (The Web 2.0 thing is the overall philosophy of harnessing the collective knowledge and maybe wisdom of web users through tools like del.icio.us (bookmark sharing), flickr (photo sharing), 43 things/places (talking about things we want to do and places to go) and such.

I've been using a little tool called suprglu lately which harvests all of your blog posts, del.icio.us favourites, flickr pics and so on and so forth and puts them all up in the one location. My suprglu page can be found at http://colism.suprglu.com

Wow, that was just going to be a quick post - hope there was something of interest for you.

(Couple of things I forgot - if you're interested in a browser to make good use of the Web 2.0 stuff, take a look at Flock - it's still in development but has been working pretty well for me for the last few weeks. And then, if, like me, you like to check out news and such from a few different websites and blogs, take a look at bloglines - it lets you create a list of feeds that summarise new content added that are updated as soon as the sites are.)

Ok, done now

The people united...

Popped down to the National Day of Protest this morning at the Canberra Racecourse (Thoroughbred Park? - puhleease) and on returning, put my 2 bob's worth up on the RiotACT site - bit of discussion ensued which was nice.

check it all out here - link

The people united… [National Community Day of Protest against IR Changes - In Canberra]
Posted on 11.15.05 by colsim @ 11:43 am

I was there - sooo wish I had a camera - everyone from Rebel’s bikies to fluoro clad builders to cardigan wearing public servants turned up for some great speeches and a statement of defiance.

I had also been wondering why the racecourse rather than Parliament - but with that many cars and buses, parking would’ve been impossible and I’m sure that getting permission to set up big screens and Sky Channel reception on the Parliamentary lawn might be have been something of the challenge as well.

Got there a little late (8.30 for kickoff?! - sorry, I tried) so couldn’t get to the inside section but the audio was crisp and clear, the message was strong and the workers were truly united.

To use the words of johnny’s political master - Bring it on.

Tunes for today

Cutting it fine but here are the tunes I'll be selecting from this arvo - hope there's something in there you like(d)


Mr Milk You Am I 3:16 Hourly Daily
Harry Was A Bad Bugger Tex, Don & Charlie 5:19 All Is Forgiven
The Singer of The Song Tex, Don & Charlie 4:49 All Is Forgiven
Into Temptation Jimmy Little 4:48 Messenger
Bonnie & Clyde Mick Harvey 3:57 Intoxicated Man
Into my arms Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 4:16 The boatmans call
Keith And Tina Sodastream 5:42 Take Me With You When You Go
The Stkilda Chilla The Speakeasies 4:42 Speaken Freely
Cherry blossom girl AIR 3:39 Talkie Walkie
Tropicalia Beck 3:20 Mutations
A Good Soundtrack (Pushin' Fear) Ed Kuepper 3:36 Death To The Howdy-Doody Brigade
Surfing Magazines The Go-Betweens 4:33 The Friends Of Rachel Worth
Kids With Guns Gorillaz 3:45 Demon Days
Stones Paradise Motel 6:33 Still Life
Inertia Creeps Massive Attack 5:55 Mezzanine
Adelaide Paul Kelly 3:37 Post
Sorted for E's & Wizz Pulp 3:47 Different Class
Everything in it's right place Radiohead 4:11 Kid A

Hot Kids Riff Random 4:04 Kill Your Idols
Woman Wolfmother 2:41 Kill Your Idols
Where Eagles Have Been Wolfmother 5:33 Wolfmother
No Way Out Love Of Diagrams 4:01 Kill Your Idols
Girl & the Sea The Presets 4:40 Kill Your Idols
Help You Out The Golden Age 3:05 Mexico City Bees
Big in Japan The Inches 3:39 Trust me
Take You Home Devastations 3:53 Coal
The Night I Couldn't Stop Crying Devastations 4:58 Coal
Rubin The Anyones 3:34 The Anyones
Sabotage The Beastie Boys 2:59 The Sounds Of Science (Disc 2)
Yo Mama Butterfingers 3:20 Breakfast At Fatboys
Say Goodbye Hunters & Collectors 4:53 Living In Large Rooms And Lounges (Disc 2)
Get Off The Dandy Warhols 3:11 Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
Useless Depeche Mode 4:53 The Singles 86>98 (Disc 2)
Mr. E's Beautiful Blues (Untitled) Eels 3:59 Daisies Of The Galaxy
We Care A Lot (Original Version) Faith No More 4:03 Who Cares A Lot? The Greatest Hits
Self Abuser The Fauves 2:54 Future Spa
Love will tear us apart Joy Division 3:12 Series 7 - The Soundtrack

Empire Mags Top 50 Indy films

Nothing like a nice Top Whatever list to get you thinking (and sometimes fired up)

Anyways, Empire Magazine, a reasonable if not fairly mainstream and simplistic read, has put out their selection for the top 50 independent films - check it out here

The criteria used is, according to the opening blurb

Bearing in mind that to encompass all those that are independently financed would mean The Phantom Menace is an independent film, we've qualified all entries by ensuring they were made with what we consider to be an independent spirit. The final order then takes into account the quality of the film, the circumstances behind its production, the achievement of the filmmakers despite monetary and logistical constraints and its influence on subsequent projects.

If you're having some trouble with your clicking finger, the top 10 are
10: Mean Streets
9: Sideways
8: The Usual Suspects
7: Sex, Lies and Videotape
6: Night of the living dead
5: Monty Python's Life of Brian
4: Clerks
3: The Terminator
2: Donnie Darko
1: Reservoir Dogs

The Devastations at the ANU bar

Wow.

Clare Bowditch was nice and all with a very endearing stage presence, but for my mind, the night, nay the year, belonged to The Devastations.

I've never heard such crisp and clean dirty distorted guitar solos and was blown away by the sophistication of the song writing.

All the reviews you read draw comparisons to the mood and stylings of artists from Leonard Cohen to Serge Gainsbourg to Johnny Cash to latter day luminaries including Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Pulp (and on the vocals front, I'd probably throw in a smoothened version of Tex Perkins growl) - now the reviews may be right (though don't ask the band about this - though all good bands hate to be pigeonholed in this manner) but The Devastations are so much more again.

They harness an incredible balance of smokin' and sexy baritone vocals, bass, single sometimes finessed and otherwise screaming guitar, drums and classic piano keyboard with a particularly deft touch in the songwriting department.

Chatting to some of the band after (yeah, I'm so rock'n'roll :), they were saying that they'd toned things done a little for this show - what with the much more mellow Clare Bowditch sound to follow on - and I have to say I'd be pretty interested to check them out in full flight. Having said that though, both of their albums are finely polished works which give full priority to the beauty of the songs and just hint at the manic screechy distorted yet crisply clean guitar work (think the solo near the end of "I don't want to lose you tonight" on Coal) that kicks in when the generally easygoing songs really rev up live.

For me, I thought that the balance between keeping the melody (very strong melodys) and bringing the rock was spot on.

Gig of the year in my book.

(Must make special mention of the keyboard too - I can see that the piano sound is perhaps one of the things that draws the Bad Seeds comparisons as no-one else in rock uses the keyboards this effectively - just boldening the sound at the right moment with particularly well chosen chords and floating melodies.)

(And I know the drummer almost never gets a wrap in most write-ups - unless they suck of course - but the engine room was mighty and strong with the light touch at times asked by the tunes)

These guys still have a few more shows in Oz before they bugger off back to Europe, so do what you can to check them out. Now!.

Tex, Don, Charlie - and Mick

Went down to Holy Grail in Civic last night (as opposed to the "launching place of a 1001 sleazy political rumours" one in Kingston) and caught Tex, Don and Charlie doing their thing last night.

Very happy to discover that they were being supported by long time Bad Seed Mick Harvey (who has a pretty respectable body of solo work in his own right). Mick put on a tidy performance, marred by the fact that a large proportion of the slack-jawed "where's Tex" punters talked through most of the set. Still, when he was belting it out, things were right with the world. I have to confess I didn't recognise many of his songs - though did appreciate his rendition of Serge Gainsbourg's Bonnie and Clyde.

Then it was time for TD&C - for a fairly casual outfit with 2 cds to their name over 12 years, they seemed to have a wealth of material to select from. Have to confess I haven't had much of a listen to their new album just yet ("All is forgiven") but was quite familiar with the last ("Sad but true" - from 93). They kicked off with a few tracks from Sad but true - standouts being Redheads, Gold cards and Louise (well, for me at least, some of my personal faves and you know you always like the songs you know).

Bunch of stuff from their new album after that - which was mostly great (one or two quieter moments maybe) including a Don Walker tune - Harry was a bad bugger - which was very cool and I'll definitely be looking for that one on the album - probably even play it on the show on Monday. Danielle was another highlight - originally a Cold Chisel song named Janelle - which you could see had the memories ticking over in at least a few members of the audience in a "Where the hell do I know this from...is it...is it a Chisel song?" kind a way.

After bailing to the backstage area (a.k.a the disabled toilet at stage right - ah that glamourous rock life) the boys came back out for a cracking encore. "The Singer of the song" was an astoundingly theatrical number letting Tex do the rock showman thing in all his glory with a very very Tom Waits kinda feel - even making use of the otherwise fairly out of place steep metal staircase to the dj booth that everyone was otherwise too polite to mention.

All this and I haven't even mentioned Charlie Owens great guitar licks (played a very cool but cheesy solo that Tex gave him some stick for in some of the great onstage banter that was yet another highlight of the show - you could really tell that the guys were having a good time just hanging out with each other and playing tunes) and the added bonus of Mick Harvey backing up the band on drums (and singing on Danielle)

Of course, a night out isn't the same without some great company and on that score I was v. lucky - thanks to the lovely Amanda, Fran and Pete for being cool and ace at the same time. Pix to come shortly.

Feel so dirty but still strangely tempted

Now while I wouldn't normally be one to act the corporate shill, this latest offering from Sony (pushers of a rather evil DRM - digital rights management - scheme that blocks users from ripping their cds to iTunes because they're in some kind of trade war with Apple) has me thinking.

My housemate Derek (top bloke) has a PS2 and the latest Singstar game (essentially Karaoke for PS2 with the ability to rate your singing skills based on frequency/pitch/tone/whatever) has a big 80's theme.

Here's the tracklist. (I have to confess that it's the inclusion of 99 Red Balloons by Nena that brings this to tipping point)(Click the list for a larger version)

New listenings and watchings

I've come across a couple of new and groovy Oz things in the last 2 days - went to see Wolf Creek last night - what an absolute cracker. From go to whoa the story is strong and credible, the performances are spot-on, the characters are likable, the cinematography is stark but very very impressive and the tension just keeps on a building.

The Wolf Creek movie website is also pretty cool and features a Flash background which looks like fullscreen video from the movie. Nice effect. Not sure how this would run on a dialup connection, I know I can take my beautiful work connection for granted sometimes but see how you go.

You know when you watch a horror film and you just don't buy the stupid things that people do - well this time, they don't (really) do the stupid things. Hooray. I also like the fact that it doesn't need to spell every last little detail out and that the ending actually seems like something that would happen in reality.



Musically, I just picked up a compilation put out by the good folk at FBi - 94.5FM in Sydney called Kill Your Idols. Great selection of tracks on there from a heap of up and coming (and just plain old up - Wolfmother, Decoder Ring etc) bands that I'm really enjoying. Particularly partial to the tracks from Riff Random, Wolfmother, Love of Diagrams and The Presets at the moment. Little less impressed by the Decoder Ring track - though it isn't just them, it's Decoder Ring vs Spod, so lets blame Spod shall we? :)

So wrong it's almost right (but only almost)

There's really nothing I can say about this image - it just came through the email.
If you like this kind of thing though, you'll go nuts for beedogs - particular when the owners and their pets dress up as bees together.

Tunes for today's show

Ok, getting progressively more organised. Here are the tracks I'll be selecting from for today's show. Hope there's something in there that you like (or, you know, ideally, lots :)

Wayward.....Vashti Bunyan.....3:06.....Lookaftering
Six Months In a Leaky Boat.....Little Birdy.....3:53.....She Will Have Her Way
Fall At Your Feet.....Clare Bowditch.....3:50.....She Will Have Her Way
Sex & Mayhem.....The Devastations.....4:22.....Coal
Louise.....Tex, Don & Charlie.....4:48.....Sad But True
It Looks Like You.....Evan Dando.....3:15.....Baby I'm Bored
Sun King.....The Beatles.....2:26.....Abbey Road
Blasphemous Rumours.....Depeche Mode.....5:09.....Singles 81-85
Sunday Session.....Weekender Ft Zoe Johnston.....4:38.....The
Chillout Session 2
X-Ray Eyes.....Randy.....3:23.....Welfare Problems
I Know.....The Beta Band.....3:59.....3 E.P.'s
Charity Board.....Sodastream.....4:33.....Take Me With You When You Go
Let It All Turn Black.....Sodastream.....3:57.....Take Me With You When You Go
The beautiful look city today.....Gersey.....9:05.....Hope springs
Summer of love.....Black Cab.....4:51.....Altamont Diary
Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.....Martha Wainwright.....3:14.....Martha
Wainwright
Serac.....Decoder Ring.....5:24.....Fractions
The Rift.....Ween.....5:41.....Shinola (Vol. 1)

I Still Have Your Picture.....Sounds Like Sunset.....3:29.....Invisible
(Gone is the) Freedom Train.....John Ford.....4:02.....Bullets for Dreamers
Irony.....The Scare.....2:54.....Vacuum Irony
Blacklist Forever.....Blacklist.....3:29.....Electric And Evil
1980.....The Inches.....3:44.....Trust me
Brand New Song.....The Golden Age.....3:42.....Mexico City Bees
Keep On Running.....Cato Salsa Experience.....3:37.....No. 3
A Plateful Brain.....Messer Chups.....3:13.....Crazy Price
MaleMiceMatingSongs.....Mice.....0:52.....WebWonderOfTheWeek
Interlude ft Ziggy Ziznack.....The Speakeasies.....3:34.....Speaken Freely
Tomorrow Will Do.....Hilltop Hoods.....3:13.....The Calling
Going Home.....Feelstyle.....6:08.....Break It To Pieces
Fortress Europe.....Asian Dub Foundation.....3:53.....Enemy Of The Enemy
The day we lost Fitzroy.....The Bites.....3:05.....White lines and runways
Paranoid.....Black Sabbath.....2:49.....Paranoid
Love Gun.....Kiss.....3:18.....The Very Best Of Kiss
Crunchy.....Blues Explosion.....3:40.....Damage
Your Starlight.....Future Kings Of Spain.....3:18.....Your Starlight
Everybody Lets Me Down.....J. Mascis And The Fog.....3:15.....Free So Free
Supernaturally.....Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.....4:37.....The Lyre Of Orpheus
Like A Hurricane.....Jay Farrar.....7:08.....Stone, Steel & Bright Lights

Can't afford that motorbike? Build your own

http://www.livejournal.com/community/wtf_inc/1748032.html#cutid1


Ok, well I got this link from www.boingboing.net (a great resource for all kinds of cool stuff online) and they say they don't know much about who built this or where or why but it's pretty cool and kind of speaks for itself anyways.

There are another six pix of it and the rider up there.

Web Wonder of the Week 2 - War of the Worlds radioplay by Star Trek cast

http://www.scpr.org/programs/latw/

Ok, I know it couldn't get much geekier than this but I guess this is where I have to come out and admit it - I - uh...well... have geeky friends :)

Radio 89.3 KPCC (kinda nifty that we have the same numbers in our frequency) has a one week only streaming audio file of H.G Wells classic story War of the Worlds - in the radio play format created by Orson Welles - as performed by members of Star Trek and Star Trek : The Next Generation.

This is what their website has to say about it

By H.G. Wells, adapted by Howard Koch. Leonard Nimoy, Gates McFadden,
Brent Spiner and fellow cast members from the TV series “Star Trek”
recreate this classic science fiction thriller, which became known as
the “panic broadcast” when it first aired in 1938. The story’s
breathless pace and convincing details make it clear why so many
believed that the aliens were among us.

The stream requires RealMedia (alas - imho the crappiest of the online streaming systems) but looks worth it.

Live long and prosper ;)

Web wonder of the week

Well, unless some competitor song or sound dashes to the front of the pack between now and Monday arvo, I'm pretty sure you're going to be listening to the (previously unheard) sounds that male mice make when they're a'courtin. (These have been slowed down by helpful scientists in white coats to make them human audible)

Link

How to survive a robot uprising

Ok, well on a somewhat lighter note, I got a new book this morning, fresh off the plane from the good folks at Amazon. (yeah, I know, big multinational, yada, but I couldn't find it here yet).

It's call How to survive a robot uprising : Tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion and is written by a guy called Daniel H Wilson (who is actually a roboticist himself). (It's entirely tongue in cheek, just in case you were wondering - although apparently it has upset some in the roboticist community who hate any suggestion that robots could turn evil.)

Anyways, it's got a very cool shiny cover and the pages also have a very cool shiny metallic red finish on them (who says don't judge a book by it's cover :)

find out a little more on their site - http://www.robotuprising.com

(Yes, I know this is a little geeky but there you go. Like Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama) says, "There is no story that can't be made a million times better with a robot")

Seditious intent

Freaking out a little about the new raft of "anti-terror" legislation and their implications for freedom of speech and democracy in general?

Check this out then.

::: SEDITIOUS INTENT – films inspired by Australia’s Anti-Terror Bill

SEDITIOUS INTENT is an online site for short films and a proposed DVD made up of a series of quality political films, some sad, some funny, some downright shocking.
http://culture2.org/si/

Call for Film Submissions

Create a short film (between 30 seconds and 5 minutes) that responds in some way to the draconian anti-terrorism laws.

The short film must include an interpretation of an image (or images) from the Government's "HELP PROTECT AUSTRALIA FROM TERRORISM" campaign, or a word or phrase from the anti-terrorism legislation.

Deadline: 27th January 2006

The time line associated with this initiative won't prevent the laws from being implement. However, 'SEDITIOUS INTENT' is aimed at keeping the discussion alive and enabling filmmakers to participate in actions that provoke debate that leads to change.

For more details, please visit http://culture2.org/si/

Creative commons

No doubt at least some of you out there have come across the idea of Creative Commons as you've been trawling around the net - in short though, it's an alternative to copyright which allows anyone who creates a work/document/whatever that would normally fall under copyright law to free it up and make it available to anyone to do what they like with - while still preserving certain rights for the creator.

There are a couple of great Flash animations on the Creative Commons site that you might like to check out if you'd like to find out a little more.

http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/

Update 6/11/05 - I've just seen an article on boing boing saying that Google has added a search by Creative Commons function to their search engine. Nifty. (It's in the advanced search bit)

John Peel's all time faves

Great article here about the 142 songs that lived in John Peel's all time favourite record box. (If you don't know who John Peel was, where have you been? Read this. In short, one of the best radio djs ever.). There are 142 tracks in all - from the article

The first thing that strikes you about the full list is how little of the grinding dark-core, impenetrable electronica and twisted ultra-noise that he loved to champion — “The unpleasant and disorientating racket”, as he once described it — actually found its way into his heart. There’s a lot of old-school soul there, such as Eddie & Ernie, OV Wright, Johnnie Taylor and Ann Peebles, and plenty of reggae: Lee Perry, Andy Capp, Blood Fire Posse and Izzy Royal. Indeed, if a theme emerges, it’s that he truly loved music that was simple. He seems to have had a bit of a thing about two-piece outfits, or raw, basic tracks with straightforward lyrics: Al Casey’s Surfin’ Hootenanny, five Charlie Feathers singles, Don French’s Lonely Saturday Night and an astonishing 12 tracks by the White Stripes.

Check out the list in full here

New music - Sounds like Sunset

Hey y'all,

well I was just reading BMA, our local streetpress and was happy to see that the new album from Sydney band Sounds like Sunset that I played a couple of tracks from on Monday is in fact their album of the week. Well deserved, it's a pretty bloody good album.

This week I've been checking out The Blacklist (old school hard rockin'), Cato Salsa Experience (billed as Norway's best rock band - maybe but is someone forgetting Turbonegro?), Feelstyle (English/Samoan hiphop), The Scare (hard'n'fast Stripesy styled and more) and John Ford (70's style rawk - some good, some less so). Tune in on Monday between 4 and 6 to check them all out.

Playlist for 31/10/05

Hi there - well, as promised, here is the playlist from last night (for what it's worth). A lot of what I'm doing here is trying stuff out, so this may be of interest or not. I'll try next time around to get this up before the show perhaps - what do you think?

Hope you enjoyed at least some of this and if you have requests (for music preferably :), please let me know

cheers

col


The Clock The Go-Betweens 4:06 The Friends Of Rachel Worth

Did You See Me? Ween 5:11 Shinola (Vol. 1)

Transitions Ween 3:45 Shinola (Vol. 1)

Sex Euro And Elvis Pop Messer Chups 2:55 Crazy Price

SuperSonik Vibrator Messer Chups 3:03 Crazy Price

Just Dropped In Kenny Rogers & The First Edition 3:20 The Big Lebowski

Out There Dinosaur Jr 5:53 Ear-Bleeding Country: Best Of Dinosaur Jr

Expressway Sounds Like Sunset 5:19 Invisible

It's My Star Sounds Like Sunset 2:54 Invisible

Hot Ride The Prodigy 4:36 Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned

The Bottle Gil Scott Heron With Brian Jackson 5:16 The Best Of Blaxploitation (Disc 1)

Then there's sirens Gersey 3:21 Hope springs

Unicorns L.A My Barbarian 4:53 My Barbarian Website

Whatcha drinkin tonight? The Speakeasies 4:13 Speaken Freely

Fresh bud The Speakeasies 4:03 Speaken Freely

Pa don't understand me Bam Bam 2:54 Pet Hates

The Knocker Bam Bam 2:56 Pet Hates

A Blind Alley Ni-Hao! 1:14 Red Blue Green

Liger Ni-Hao! 2:12 Red Blue Green

1980 The Inches 3:44 Trust me

Brand New Song The Golden Age 3:42 Mexico City Bees

Lick The Bacon Osterberg 2:08 Osterberg

Midweek morning The Lucksmiths 3:05 Naturaliste

Millionaire Adventurer Balloonist The Titanics 3:04 Love Is The Devil

It's OK Black Cab 2:50 Altamont Diary

A Good Soundtrack (Pushin' Fear) Ed Kuepper 3:30 Character Assassination

Sour Times Portishead 4:16 Dummy