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September 29, 2004
Futuremusik
Right on, this is the kind of thing I like to see going on in town on a Saturday afternoon. In conjunction with its first annual Indy Music Awards festival taking place later that night, The Independent is sponsoring a free panel discussion this Saturday from 2 to 4 pm at the Century Center in Carrboro. Titled "The Future of Music in the Triangle", the discussion promises to address that fascinating and ever-changing intersection of some of my favorite topics: music, technology, copyright, media, etc. Looks like a solid panel, featuring the likes of ibiblio's Fred Stutzman, drummer extraordinaire Dave Cantwell, local rapper Cesar Comanche, and Yep Roc Records/Red Eye Distribution head Tor Hansen (who, incidentally, ran both of those businesses out of his home at 202-A Maple immediately before some less competent record label proprietors moved in and started using the house for more festive purposes...). The panel moderator is Indy writer Fiona Morgan, who routinely does a great job of addressing music+law+technology issues in her Indy columns.
I'm DJing at The Federal yet again this coming Saturday night, so unfortunately I won't be able to make any of the Indy Music Awards or the musical events going on after dark. But if you have the night off and are in the vicinity, I would highly recommend going to see the short film of Protean Spook that is being screened at The ArtsCenter at 9:00pm that night. It's a live show/performance that Tom Laney filmed at the Penland School of Crafts sometime last year and it's a pretty mesmerizing glimpse into the musical genius of the late Randy Ward. Check out this 2 minute excerpt for a preview.
Oh, and on a completely different but equally mesmerizing musical note....the third part of the debut Battles trilogy is finally out on Dim Mak. This summer's opening salvos left me wanting more, but this new B EP has just about everything that I was hoping for. And at a fuller 30 minutes, it's not over so damn quick...
Posted by Tim at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2004
You Crazy For This One, Rick!
A few of you who know former Chapel Hill resident Ricky Dollars may have already seen/heard his highly politicized "99 Problems" freestyle....hell, you may have been fortunate enough to catch him and Jesse P. doing "99 Problems" at Bub's karaoke a couple of months back! Sadly, I wasn't there to see it. At any rate, RDA's reworking definitely deserves a listen. Check it out right hurr...or click on the image to the right. My favorite couplet from the NYU creative writer's latest work:
I don't think I can help you...well, perhaps I can.
Hot Tip: Bin Laden's in Pakistan
I'd love to see Kerry turn to Bush on Thursday and use something on the order of the "hot tip" line. Which reminds me, the Slam Bush promo video is pretty funny if you didn't see it when it came out. Nice lyrical counterpoint: "Problems evolving, partial involvement could solve it if you weren't golfing so often."
I'm really not sure why videos like the Slam Bush promo and the Will Farrell "White House West" clip and the MoveOn 10Weeks ads and all of the Errol Morris "Switch" ads never showed up repeatedly in my email inbox the way that stupid JibJab cartoon did. Too blatantly partisan for mass-forwarding?
I doubt it'll be done anytime soon, but a couple months ago I started working on a track that uses the other part of "99 Problems", the part that Ricky Dollars discarded. Yeah, I know the world doesn't really need any more of those things...but man is it fun to mix-and-match with "The Red Album"!
Posted by Tim at 06:10 PM | Comments (1)
September 24, 2004
In The Paper, The News Every Day I Am
Thankfully not every day, just today. And I normally don't sit my laptop on the top of my lap like that but the photographer seemed to prefer that angle...as well as the serious "I'm working" pose.
For the record, I was actually using the UNC wireless network and not the Town of Carrboro's. Though I do think it's really cool that the town is so interested in creating a significant 802.11/WiFi infrastructure. Maybe "The Portland of the Piedmont" is more like it...
Which reminds me, in case anyone missed it back in 2003, here is the Real Player link to The Daily Show's "The French Persistence", the awesome Stephen Colbert report that hilariously skewered Carrboro's declaration of April 2003 as "French Trade Month". C'est la vie! C'est la guerre!
Posted by Tim at 05:27 PM | Comments (7)
September 22, 2004
Still Got The Power
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Jesse Lee, the online editor for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the main blogger over at the DCCC weblog The Stakeholder. The DCCC wanted to use my Snap!/Enron mashup "Enron's Got The Power" as the audio track for a video piece that they were putting together about Bush, Tom Delay, Enron, and the California energy crisis. I was more than happy to let them use it however they saw fit, even though I later wondered if consent was even required to re-use a cheap attempt at plunderphonics that, uh, didn't really get cleared by any lawyers here in Tuba City. Question for Creative Commons theorists: should what some people refer to as copyright violation "contaminate" a work in much the same way that a GPL license does? Hmm...
At any rate, an initial version of the video has just been posted on the DCCC site, so go watch it before Snap!'s lawyers find out about it. I really like how they censored the Enron traders' uses of the f-word with cash register "ka-ching" sounds! Joe Trippi seems to like it, too.
And of course, this is all very nice timing given the indictments handed out yesterday in the Tom DeLay PAC probe. "The Hammer" has got to go....that dude really gets the Gas Face.
Posted by Tim at 03:54 PM | Comments (3)
September 17, 2004
Them Wild Saturday Nights
John L. says I should post more....someday soon I may return to the longer ramblings about music and politics and whatnot but I'm trying to juggle way too many activities at the moment. So I'll compromise by using this blog to promote one of those things that has been eating away little bits of my time: Saturday nights at The Federal in Durham! I'm not DJing there every Saturday night, but if it's not me, it'll be one of my highly recommended DJ pals spinning records/CDs from 10pm until a little after 2am. Not in an all-out dance party fashion a la the Bueno Love Baller Soundsystem parties at Hell, but a more eclectic and less commercial smorgasbord of hip-hop (all eras), dancehall, ragga, post-rock, avant-disco, electronic, other beat-centric stuff, etc. The style probably varies depending on the week, the DJ, the crowd, etc. But if you like any of the above genres, you might very well enjoy hanging out and having a few microbrews, of which the Federal has an excellent selection. Still trying to come up with a name for this "weekly", but in the meantime, the schedule rolls on:
9/18 - DJ Twombly (aka yours truly)
9/25 - Cannonballz (Merch mastermind and major record aficionado)
10/2 - DJ Twombly with special guest DJ Bret D
Incidentally, Bret D. is probably the only person on this planet submitting articles to both Tarheel Daily and Wax Poetics! That Saturday night should be feelin' kinda sporty. Which reminds me....I probably shouldn't jinx this before it's planned, but our boy Tompkins is threatening to come back to North Carolina for a visit next month....and like any good airline, we at Tuba City are hoping for a Saturday night stay. Federal requirements!
Posted by Tim at 01:25 AM | Comments (1)
September 15, 2004
Lure Us In Like Spiders
While taking out the trash just now, I encountered the largest spider I have ever seen outside of a museum or zoo. It was absolutely ginormous, it must've been three inches long or thereabouts.
During the brief few minutes that I spent gawking at it and taking pictures, it ate two bugs that became ensnared in its monstrous web. No waiting period or anything, this spider was hungry.
Hopefully it won't have spiderwebbed my entire house by the time I wake up tomorrow.
This concludes tonight's brief installment of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
Posted by Tim at 11:32 PM | Comments (1)
September 07, 2004
Vote Or Not = 9.8
OK, so I am still not really in a blogging mood these days....but I'm willing to participate in a shameless but pretty brilliant viral marketing contest when I see one. The Hot or Not guys started a "Vote or Not" contest to encourage people to vote....and here's the link where you can enter to win $100,000 as long as you happen to be registered to vote on November 2nd. The winner of a drawing gets $100K and the person that referred the winner (i.e., me if you win after entering through the above link) gets another $100K. I'm sure the Founding Fathers would be horrified at the idea of dangling greenbacks in front of the citizenry in order to inspire voting.....or who knows, maybe they would see it as a necessary incentive given low voter participation rates....'cause their preference for representative/indirect democracy wasn't exactly based on supreme confidence in the decision-making powers of the average citizen.
At any rate, it's definitely arguable that a higher turnout of completely uninformed voters does not do the country any good. But I think there are plenty of adequately informed voters who don't know all the details about registration deadlines and address-changing requirements and the like....and maybe just need a small poke from the cattle prod in order to get registered in advance. So I support this contest as a potentially effective tool for encouraging people to vote. And I would even hazard a completely speculative guess that younger, Internet-surfing folks in need of $100K are probably going to trend a little bit more towards Kerry in this election. So I pass along my Vote Or Not link in hopes that it encourages at least one extra person to register to vote. The North Carolina registration deadline is October 8th (almost exactly a month away), by the way.
So click here and be a greedy patriot! This might be the most ingenious viral marketing scheme since....Gmail invites! Speaking of which, I'll throw in one of those if you're among the first 5 Gmail-wanting folks to sign up through my link.
Somehow these sorts of things always remind me of the recursive definition of recursion. Which reminds me that I have some programming to get back to...
Posted by Tim at 07:49 PM | Comments (3)