We’d played this song a ton on Unhindered by Talent when it was new, and I had no idea there was ever a video for it. A friend of Tom’s just pointed him to it over on Facebook (thanks Devin!) and I had way too much fun watching this several times. So many wonderful images, but I must say the drummer in pearls and the three dudes in lederhosen crack me up every time.

The album this is from was initially released in Australia in 2000, but it’s UK and US releases were delayed as the band worked to sort out sampling clearances, ultimately replacing several of the samples they couldn’t get cleared.

It might also be useful to read the lyrics since Aesop Rock’s verses (which are crucial to our exchange) are tricky to follow and understand. (I totally missed the “Vin Van” reference to Vincent Van Gogh until I read these, for example.)

Now to the exchange:

Tom: Thank you for paying for that [something minor]… For paying for college and so many other things… I feel like I owe you guys more than I could ever pay back…

Nic: DON’T SEND ME AN EAR!

Tom: That was the single best response you could’ve sent :-)

A nice example of why art and music matter. They give us a short-hand language for describing important and difficult concepts. Tom and I had discussed the lyrics to this song at some length when the video came out a few weeks ago, and Tom’s initial text really resembles some of the ideas Aesop is presenting in the song. Because of that conversation, I could respond with could appear as a bit of a non sequitur that would instead carry with it tons of information, and manage to raise a smile at the same time.

I’ll wrap by definitely recommending The Uncluded album. I think “Delicate Cycle” (video above) is a really wonderful song; I listened to it about a zillion times when the video came out. While some of the songs seem to have Kimya and Aesop’s parts kind of pasted together, Perhaps the two most “unified” sounding songs in my opinion are “TV at 10” and “Organs”, both of which are just killer. Tom really likes “Bats” as well. So check it out, and share your thoughts.

This is great stuff, and reminds me of some of the high points of the early days of Open Mic Night at UMM. I love how she uses the looping electronics in a way that comes across as very organic and acoustic.

Being a well-trained father, I did exactly that:

Subject: HOLY MOTHER OF FRAK YOUR FAMOUS
DAD.

DADADAD.

YOUR GODDAMN PHOTO.

FROM THE FIRST BLOWOUT.

IS.

THE.

PHOTO.

FOR.

DOOMTREE.

ON WIKIPEDIA.

WAT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomtree

At least it is RIGHT NOW

(We’ll blame his failure to use the correct version of “you’re” in the subject on his abject excitement.)

Jeez O’Criminey Pete! – It’s true! If you head on over there, the picture of five rappers that they’re using is indeed one of mine from our first Blowout nearly two years ago now. That’s even Thomas’s arm and hand sticking out of the green sweatshirt sleeve in the foreground :-) (This link points to today’s version of the page in case they come to their senses and swap in a different picture down the road.)

There are certainly better photographers and photographs of the crew out there, so I’m a little surprised. I suspect my liberal Creative Commons licensing has a lot to do with it, as I’m pretty Wikipedia/Wikimedia friendly in that regard. Still, it’s super cool to see people using my photo this way.

I should also make it clear that it almost certainly wasn’t someone at Doomtree that made this choice. Wikipedia strongly discourages/disallows people creating or editing content about themselves, so I’m guessing this choice was made by someone outside of the crew.

I should also point out that the content of the entry is pretty thin and kinda sad. I think some folks should get on that – we gotta make sure there’s good text to distract people from the lousy picture up at the top :-)

Thanks to Thomas for the pointer!

• UMM/KUMM alums
• Bored kids & teenagers looking to chat
• Young adults (mostly male) presumably looking for e-sex

A few folks from the second category stuck around for quite a while; they were presumably really bored. The folks from the third category mostly left quite promptly, which was nice.

I’m not sure how we’ll manage this in the future, but it certainly was odd and fun. Next week we may set things up so that the video is archived on YouTube, which would allow me to watch later through the eyes of guests, which might be interesting (or boring).

Thanks to everyone who listened and/or watched! See you next week :-)

While it’s really hard to describe and summarize such a complex performance, a section I particularly loved had them doing a somewhat traditional dance to a large chunk of the audio from the video below. The video is of an art installation by Nate Harrison where the viewer listens to the audio on an LP, where Harrison discusses how a drum break from the The Winston’s 1969 B-side “Amen, brother” (often referred to now as the “Amen break”) has been sampled, re-used, and deconstructed in hip-hop and commercial advertising. Harrison’s discussion is a really nice piece of cultural history and analysis, although I confess it was perhaps more compelling with casebolt and smith dancing at the same time.

It would have been interesting in its own right if casebolt and smith had simply danced with Harrison’s commentary. They took it up a notch, however, by following it up with a really interesting dance/discussion of how dancers use and re-appropriate moves and steps they learn in classes and see in performance, effectively “sampling” movements much like a hip-hop artist samples beats. She demonstrated various moves and styles, and he then grilled her about where she learned the moves, and on the appropriateness of re-using these moves without credit or payment. This quickly borders on the absurd, which is of course the point. The courts have allowed labels to charge for re-use of tiny fragments of recordings, where there are no such expectations in dance. Presumably a key piece of this is the ability to record (either on paper or as an audio recording) and distribute music, where dance can’t be recorded and copied in the same way.

In short, it was a cool, funny, intelligent performance. We had a great time, and highly recommend the show.

I found it really interesting to find that the YouTube version of the video above was in fact lifted from Harrison’s web site without his permission, although he says in the comments that he doesn’t care (search for “nkhstudio” in the full comments). So you have Harrison making a commentary on copyright and intellectual property, which is then appropriated by someone else and turned into a YouTube video. Then casebolt and smith use it in their performance, without ever telling us where that audio comes from, as a starting point for a great conversation about intellectual property. And while it’s possible they knew about the Harrison piece before it showed up on YouTube (Harrison was a friend from college for all I know), the odds favor them discovering the piece via YouTube, where it has over 2 million views.

So…

• Now I’ve listened to “Amen, brother” (a song I’d never heard of)
• because of a dance performance
• borrowing parts of an audio track
• which I was able to find via Google
• as a YouTube video
• generated (without permission) from a video by a performance artist commenting on intellectual property and copyright
• using as a springboard the extended and repeated use of a 6 second drum break from The Winston’s “Amen, brother” in hip-hop and advertising

What a wonderful example of how re-appropriation can enrich the world, especially if we worry less about profit and more about gain.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, but we happen to have a nice 80Gb iPod Classic (pictured above) that died over the summer with the telltale clicking sound of a stuck head. So I tried out Matt’s trick & whacked quite firmly (& quite loudly) multiple times on an old wooden chest and voilà – it came back to life! We thought we’d be travelling without the benefit of our huge shared pile of music, but it’s worked beautifully for many hours (all the way down to Arkansas & back).

Huzzah! Big thanks to Matt for the suggestion – banging on hardware beats the heck out of having to buy a new iPod. Again, I was only willing to risk this because this puppy was well past warranty, and there was no chance of repairing it. Obviously beating the tar out of electronics is something one should think carefully about and do with some care; your mileage definitely may vary.

Those keeping track at home will note that noon-2pm interacts oddly with our family radio shows on KUMM on Sunday mornings (Sub-Evil from 10am-noon, WeatherGrrrl & I from noon-2pm). Sub-Evil’s show should survive largely intact, but our show may get cut off towards the end.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but even hip radio DJs sometimes have parenting responsibilities :-).

As computation becomes smaller and cheaper and more powerful, the big question remains “What are we going to do with all that?”. Cell phones and iPhones are one answer to that question, but in some sense a boring one because they’re mostly just littler laptops. Siftables, on the other hand, are representative of some of the genuinely new possibilities that these technologies enable, and are therefore much, much cooler :-).

To be honest, it’s not the best talk in the world, and probably not as compelling demo of the possibilities as one might hope for. That said, I can definitely see these being a blast, especially as people come up with cool new ways to use them.

Also, many apologies for the silence here. I’ve been much more active on Twitter than here; things have been super busy, and the 140 character world of Twitter has been much more amenable to my life and schedule than thoughtful blogging here. Lame, perhaps, but the truth nonetheless. Figuring out the balance is going to be a challenge, but that’s not today’s activity.

Now let’s get to work, folks.