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January 30, 2005

After The Show It's The After-Party

Moshi Moshi Means Dance!

I was too slow on the ticket-buying draw to make the Friday night Arcade Fire show that lots of my friends seem to have thoroughly enjoyed. But I had quite a blast DJ-ing the "day-after" party that Merge threw at Moshi Moshi tonight. The Arcade Fire had an off-date before their next show in Washington, DC....so some much-needed Chapel Hill downtime was apparently in order. Icy weather didn't seem to put any damper on the evening festivities, everyone seemed ready to dance and throw down...and that always makes me really happy as a DJ. I told Spott towards the end of the night that I knew things were probably going to go pretty well when one of the guys in the band came up on separate occasions to request both "Drop It Like It's Hot" and "I Want You Back". Strangely enough, it was that same band member who exhibited some really uncanny similarities to former-Chapel-Hillian Floyd Utschig, the current Gifu resident who once taught me how to properly say "Moshi Moshi" ("Moshi Mosh") when answering the telephone in Japan. It is true that "Moshi Moshi means hello", but they don't really pronounce that extra "ee" sound in Japan...at least not on the phone.

But enough about pronunciation, Moshi Moshi was a really great space for a party and that hardwood floor is an awesome dancefloor, definitely a nice change of pace from the concrete slab in Hell. I even did the worm across the floor at the end of the night...and without injuring or dirtying myself! Arigatô to Moshi Moshi for being so hospitable and big thanks to Merge for everything else.

This afternoon I threw together an Arcade Fire "remix" (ahem) that I was gonna try to make the centerpiece of one of my sets tonight. But I didn't wind up playing it while the Arcade Fire was in the building, partially just out of respect and partially out of fear of further freaking out a band that is already a bit overwhelmed by their newfound success and sudden popularity. But I went through too many takes of this thing for it to just die a quiet death....so here it is, another ridiculous "mashup"/blend that I put together on my computer:

"Neighborhood # 5 (Milkshake)" [4.09 MB]

Yes, it's a bunch of Arcade Fire loops synched up with Kelis' "Milkshake" acappella. Please forgive me, I've been listening to far too much of DJ P's hot new "Suck My Mixx" CD, which could be considered the long-awaited sequel to 2001's amazing Z-Trip/DJ P collaboration Uneasy Listening, Vol. 1. And on that note, hurry up with my waffle!

Posted by Tim at 04:25 AM | Comments (7)

January 28, 2005

More Technology Switching

Once this post shows up on a tubafrenzy.org page that someone besides me can read, my latest round of technology-switching should be over. This time it's not the phone line but the blog that's getting the upgrade and the simultaneous migration plan. I should've upgraded my slow-as-hell Movable Type installation quite a while ago, but inertia set in...and I got pretty good at mass-comment-spam-deletion via MySQL Control Center. But this new MovableType 3.14 is supposed to have much better support for comment moderation and spam prevention, so I'll give it a shot before abandoning MT entirely. Which is very tempting, given that the MT core is still coded in Perl!

I've also moved this tubafrenzy.org domain over to Dreamhost. The ibiblio folks are an awesome group of people and I'm still a huge fan of everything they do and the way that they do it...but the last several weeks have made it clear that their servers are victim to a true "tragedy of the commons"-type problem, with too many websites competing for a limited amount of computer resources, often without any of the websites being truly aware of (much less paying for!) the cost of their actions. Make no mistake, I lump my own site into that category of problem sites, my Movable Type 2.661 installation got heavy amounts of comment spam hammering away at its slow Perl scripts and I didn't exactly rush to upgrade to superior blogging software or anything. But I don't want to be part of the problem anymore, and I felt that I should bear the costs of whatever bandwidth, space, and processing power I consume. Luckily, this seems like it will be pretty easy to do at Dreamhost since they have really generous space and bandwidth allowances at really low prices. And a Jabber server that I can't wait to experiment with! Plus an awesome referral program to boot....if anyone out there is looking for a cheap hosting company, click here when signing up (and/or mention 'tubacity') and I'll get a whopping $65 credit that I can use to defray future hosting costs.

Dreamhost will never be as cool as ibiblio, of course....if you haven't already seen it, check out the great new ibiblog, moderated by the one and only Bret Dougherty and filled with some cool posts from the likes of Paul Jones and Fred Stutzman.

Now, I just gotta figure out how to do something with this new stylesheet/template, which I don't like nearly as much as "Stormy" with a modified burnt-orange banner up top....

Posted by Tim at 01:59 PM | Comments (2)

January 26, 2005

Call Disadvantage

A couple weeks back I signed up for CallVantage, AT&T's relatively new broadband-based phone service. VoIP seemed like a cool way to break free from the much-hated BellSouth while still keeping my existing telephone number and some semblance of landline-based phone service. And the CallVantage monthly plans seemed very reasonably priced, especially compared to regular phone service plans with all of their hidden FCC fees and universal access charges. It all seemed so promising...

But this post is not an endorsement of CallVantage. In fact, this little technology tale that I am about to tell is almost an "anti-referral", which is sort of like the viral marketing equivalent of a nonvite or an unvitation. It is also a demonstration of how exciting new technology can sometimes cause more problems than it solves....which brings to mind one of my favorite quotes of all time, a comment that Rain of the Jaguarundi once made in reference to the "donating" of really old and outdated computers: "That's like giving someone a crutch and then breaking their leg." So true, so true.

Things with CallVantage got off to a bad start when I discovered that the installation directions were woefully inadequate and not really aimed at people who already had a wireless router connected to their cable/DSL modem (surely a sizeable percentage of semi-early VoIP adopters?). But I tolerated this and eventually got things configured correctly with the help of a telephone support person. The operative word there being "eventually"....every time that I called in about one issue or another, it always took at least 15 minutes to reach a human voice.

Once my phone service was in effect, I became a little disgruntled when I discovered that the CallVantage website was giving me all kinds of login trouble in Firefox and that the online voicemail audio files (an awesome feature idea that actually sold me on the service) would supposedly only play in Windows Media Player via Internet Explorer. The downloadable voicemail files are .wav files but they're 8kHz 64kbps u-law mono .wav files that a couple of my most-used digital audio players didn't seem to like. I later discovered that these small .wav files do play in iTunes, so I could've definitely lived with that....but then came the real dealbreaker: CallVantage's complete incompatibility with Tivo! Or at least its incompatibility with my particular Series 1 phone-line-based Tivo...

Failed Connection - Why is That Tivo Smiling?

I must have run through the above screen 40 or 50 times over the last 24 hours while trying every distinct permutation of calling prefixes, dialing options, different ways of connecting my Tivo to the phone adapter/router, etc. I thought I'd hit paydirt when I finally discovered that CallVantage's service actually comes with fax/modem support turned off by default in order to save bandwidth (if bandwidth is that big of an issue than maybe we're not 100% ready for this yet?). But even turning on fax/modem support didn't help. Finally after all sorts of web-surfing and Googling I learned that Tivo does not officially support VoIP and that while some people have been able to get their Series 1 Tivos to successfully dial in for programming info, I am apparently not going to be one of those people. And AT&T refuses to help me become one of those people. Even though the original CallVantage salesman that I talked to told me that my Tivo would work fine with the AT&T VoIP service. Sigh...

My head is fried from thinking about all of this but it strikes me as kind of funny that this particular voice-over-internet-protocol phone service can transmit human voices just fine but not the machine-generated data signals that only wish they could be transmitted via IP packets instead of antiquated analog phone line technology. Seems like there's one too many square-peg/round-hole adapters clogging up the communications channel. I know I could probably do some research and figure out how to upgrade my Tivo with a network interface card and a software update but it all seems like way too much hacking to simply get the Tivo back to the same working condition that it was originally at before I tried all of this CallVantage crap. So as much as I hate to do it, I'm just going to go back to the devil I know and hold off on the whole Internet telephony thing for awhile...or at least until I decide to purchase a better/larger/faster Tivo that also happens to use a broadband connection.

"Convergence", ha. We must be a few years away. Divergence is in full effect, boyee!

Posted by Tim at 01:15 AM | Comments (6)

January 21, 2005

That's Right, Put In Work, Move Yr Ass, Go Bezerk

Three months ago Mark D. and I were throwing around potential dates for the next round of Hell dance parties...and I remember thinking that January 21st might be perfect for a big post-Kerry-inauguration party with a Gerald Ford-derived "our long national nightmare is over" theme. But alas, we just inaugurated the wrong dude again. So I will have to settle for remembering 01/20/2005 as the date of WXYC's "Best of 2004" dance party at Local 506. Which isn't such a bad thing. I was worried about how last night's weather was going to impact the turnout but the crowd was bigger than I expected and I think the whole thing went pretty well. Kudos to my fellow DJs and big thanks to everyone who came out to dance on a wintry Thursday night!

I never post my DJ setlists online for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I never write them down and it would be way too hard to remember a multi-hour set. But I was only on for about 50 minutes last night and I put a lot of advance thought and work into this one-night-only 2004-themed set. So here it is, an odd assortment of body-movers from the past year:

I had a lot of fun with this set of music, it was a definite challenge to try and figure out how to fit certain "puzzle pieces" together. I was most psyched to find a way to drop a Bandwidth track in the midst of some jamz with which it could actually be beatmatched. Since I never blogged about this Jacuzzi Brothers track last November while I was hyping various Bandwidth cuts, I will take this opportunity to encourage people to download "Bright Tiger" (5.95 MB) to their new iPod Shuffle or whatever. And to all you advertising agency creative types out there in the digital ether, you gotta check out the Jacuzzi Brothers. If Four Tet can appear in luxury watch ads on cable TV and as theme music for an NPR show, then maybe a hot Jacuzzi Brothers track could serve as the driving-around-curvy-roads soundtrack to a Mazda ad or some such thing? C'mon, t-shirt sales alone are not going to send Jacuzzi's newborn son to college!

Posted by Tim at 04:24 PM | Comments (1)

January 18, 2005

Best of 2004

No, this isn't my Top 10 or 20 records of the year, though I'll probably post that list sometime in the next couple of weeks. This is a plug for the WXYC "Best of 2004" Dance that is taking place this Thursday night (1/20) at Local 506.

This will be WXYC's second annual "Best of..." dance. Last year WXYC tried adding a "Best of 2003" dance alongside the big-cash-cow 80s Dance and the rising-in-popularity Early 90s Dance. And I think it worked really well as a meaty and detailed "year-in-review" counterweight to the retro decade dances with their broadly-brushed strokes of crowd-pleasing nostalgia. No matter what type of music it was, if it was from 2003 and it was danceable, we were encouraged to play it in da club that night. I have fond memories of trying to figure out a way to work up a single set that contained Outkast, The Rapture, Fannypack's "Cameltoe", !!!, and some hot Crydamoure Records techno from France. And some more popular jamz, of course. I think I'm starting to re-engage in my own weird bout of short-term micro-nostalgia for 2003...a year when 50 Cent ruled the charts, when that Diwali beat was everywhere, when a milkshake brought all the boys to the yard and when Junior Senior became global pop stars...

But all that is (literally) "so 2003". 2004 is actually behind us now and that's the year that Thursday night's dance will be covering. Come move ya body and drop it like it's hot as several other WXYC djs and I mix up some of the most danceable records of 2004. Sure, there will probably be some Usher and Kanye but I'm also planning on playing the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Girl Talk, and The Go! Team. I suspect that XYC faves like M.I.A.'s "Galang" and the other "Yeah" might even be played more than once. It was a very good year...well, except for that whole election thing.

Timely costumes aren't encouraged for the 2004 dance the way they are for the decade dances...but maybe they should be. I think there are actually a bunch of interesting options for people who either have the will and/or a houseful of 2004-themed relics. A daring couple could go as Justin and Janet. A less daring person could probably find one of the many Kerry/Edwards t-shirts out there that could stand to be worn one final time. Someone who had a microphone could go as a state-name-screaming Howard Dean. Someone without a microphone could go as a jig-dancing Ashlee Simpson. As for me....well, I decided that I'm simply going to roll with two of the more unbelievable sports moments of Fall 2004:

RedSoxArtest.jpg

Don't Step to Artest!

Posted by Tim at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2005

'Cause I Got Pac-Man Fever

Pac-Mondrian = the classic video game Pac-Man + Piet Mondrian's painting "Broadway Boogie Woogie" + the boogie-woogie piano sounds of Meade "Lux" Lewis, Albert Ammons, & Pete Johnson. Also equivalent to the term "genius".

Pac-MondrianReally, this creation from Toronto art group Prize Budget for Boys has got to be one of the coolest and most well-executed cultural mashups that I have ever seen. Forgive me for being several months behind the curve in saying this....I see that Pac-Mondrian has been BoingBoing-ed and MetaFilter-ed and written about on all sorts of art blogs and websites already. But somehow I didn't hear anything about it until last Sunday's News and Observer re-printed a 2-week-old NYTimes article. So I post these links and screenshots here...'cause Pac-Mondrian obviously needs to eat up at least a few more dots in the labrynthine maze of hyperlinks and blog-readers. After all, if any of my friends had stumbled upon this already, they surely would have told me about it, right? I mean, at least the ones who know that I only like pre-1986 video games and that I actually have a MOMA print of "Broadway Boogie Woogie" hanging on my wall!

Well, late boogie-woogie-ing is better than no boogie-woogie-ing at all. The Pac-Mondrian game is written in Java (yay) and seems way easier than normal Pac-Man...maybe because there's so much more space and a lot more avenues and streets to go down. Plus some of the larger "off-road" boxes allow you to "teleport" to another off-road box in a different part of the screen. What really takes the game to the next level is the boogie-woogie music from those very pianists who inspired Mondrian back in the early 40s when he first got to NYC. I love the fact that you get a high-hat sound for every blue/red/gray bit that you eat. And a much faster and more frenetic piano line whenever you consume the magic block that makes the ghosts edible. NYTimes critic Sarah Boxer claims that "the bonus of doing well at Pac-Mondrian is seeing the painting erased" so that there's "nothing left but a yellow grid". No cigar, but I got kinda close this time:

PacMondrian_GameOver.jpg

Speaking of video-game-related culture-clashes, if you missed the perfect blending of M.I.A.'s still-smokin' single "Galang" with the theme from Super Mario Bros., the Stickershock crew still has the mp3 posted online. Everybody "speak the slang now"...

Posted by Tim at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

Y'all Terrapins Didn't Want No Beef

Bojangles Biscuits

Biscuits! Sausage biscuits from Bojangles, that is. I just made my second trip in the last 7 days. Courtesy of the Heels' grinding their teeth and just rolling with it, racking up statistics. Confused? Here's a detailed explanation.

I recently mail-ordered a hot mix CD from a San Francisco DJ named Ross Hogg (a moniker that has nothing to do with my own appetite for sausage). In what turned out to be a very prescient comment, Ross Hogg signed off his return email with a friendly "eat at Bojangles for me!". I think I've definitely taken care of that....

Posted by Tim at 01:15 PM | Comments (4)

January 08, 2005

It's The Sureshot

The Federal logoWell, it's a new year and that means it's a time for a new start. Or maybe it's just time for things to get back to normal now that the holidays are over. Hmmm. I suppose there's a little bit of each of those competing cliches at work with regard to my Saturday night DJ residency at The Federal, which finally starts back up tonight. Despite the "every Saturday" plug in Rick Cornell's brief but much-appreciated survey of a few random area "bar DJs" in The Independent last month, I've only been able to DJ at The Federal every other Saturday (more or less). And while the other DJs who have been taking the other weeks have been great, it hasn't always been easy for me to organize and schedule the whole thing so that every Saturday is always covered. So The Federal and I have decided to just formalize my biweekliness. Saturday nights will be going the same biweekly route that DJ Marco's Thursday night "Federal Soul" residency has recently gone. And with this new arrangement comes a (new) name: Sureshot (gracias, TI). Which is oddly appropriate for the hoops season that is kicking into full swing before my very eyes. Starting tonight, Sureshot will be happening every two weeks...January 8th, January 22nd, February 5th, February 19th...and ya don't stop. Except you should stop....stop by anytime between 10pm and 2am!

Posted by Tim at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2005

Happy MMV

MMV, that's an odd-looking Roman numeral....and one that happens to share its name with a Linux utility. Whatever, I'm going to shut my trap and just post these pictures that I took at the New Year's Eve party at Hell.

MarkMalcolm.jpg

Stanley.jpg

AfterMidnight.jpg

Posted by Tim at 11:30 AM | Comments (4)