Month: November 2005

Jukebox, Annotated

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play. Each week, I add a little commentary about some of the artists, songs, albums, etc.

Secret Dan – The Name Droppers (Across the Great Divide) (1)
Hills of Tuscany – Bill Morrissey (You’ll Never Get to Heaven) (2)
Frank’s Theme – Tom Waits (Frank’s Wild Years) (3)
Howling at Trouble – Richard Shindell (Sparrows Point) (4)
One by One – Billy Bragg & Wilco (Mermaid Avenue) (5)
One Thing in Mind – Amy Allison (Sad Girl) (6)
Ballad of Easy Rider – The Byrds (Ballad of Easy Rider) (7)
Fallin’ Out – Robert Earl Keen (Gravitational Forces) (8)
Get Outta Here – Robert Cage (Can See What You’re Doing) (9)
For the Pleasure of You – Lloyd Cage (Bad Vibes) (10)

(1) A good song off of the Jo Carol Pierce tribute album. I don’t know anything about the band- it may be a one-off deal by some other people, but the song is pretty Good stuff. funny.

(2) I don’t like this record nearly as much as I do his first four, but this song sounds pretty good now. Maybe I should give that record another listen.

(3) Similarly, here is a song off of a transitional record from Tom Waits- the transition from his excellent work up to and including Heart Attack and Vine to his virtually unlistenable work beginning with Bone Machine. Not a bad record, but start with Nighthawks at the Diner.

(4) One of the many excellent songs off of the same record as the first song on the current RanchoCast podcast. Excellent song, excellent record. Buy it now.

(5) Great song off the Woody Guthrie songfest. This is a fine alt. country song.

(6) Mose Allison’s daughter’s voice is somewhat of an acquired taste, but she writes sad twangy songs, which are my favorite. I really like this song.

(7) As I’ve said before, no band (even my beloved Allman Brothers) influenced me as a songwriter and musician as much as The Byrds. This very mellow folk number is my favorite song on the record.

(8) Robert Earl Keen shows why he is the King of Americana. A fine song on a fine record. There are a lot of folks who try to sound like him, but very few who can write a song like him. The real deal.

(9) Robert Cage rocks, period. If you (like me) dig Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and authentic blues, this is a guy you should check out.

(10) So You’d Like to Save the World is the song to start with on this record, but this is a good, stripped down alternative pop song. Part of the album is sort of British rootsy and part of it rocks.

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Friday’s Link: License Plates of the World

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Tonight’s link is License Plates of the World. Yes, they have pictures of license plates from all over, and that is pretty cool. What I enjoy more is looking at pictures of license plates from the various states for virtually every year license plates have been made.

Here are the license plates for SC the year I was born and the rest of the 1960s

It may sound about as fun as watching paint dry (or even watching golf on TV), but it’s a fun site to explore.

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A Tale of Two Ripoffs

ripoffOne of the challenges of the internet is how to put your product out there without getting it ripped off. Yes, imitation is a form of flattery and we have all been inspired by things others have done with their blogs, web sites, etc. For example, I started my Top 50 project because I enjoyed reading similar lists from others.

And it’s OK to borrow an idea about layout or design from someone- that’s the whole basis of the creative commons movement on the web.

But sometimes this so called flattery moves beyond an inspiration or the borrowing of a layout idea. Sometimes it crosses the “know it when you see it” line from OK to definitely not OK. As a musician, I struggled with the decision about putting hundreds of fully produced song demos online. But in the end the desire to be heard trumped the desire to be safe. That’s how it is with a lot of stuff, particularly with bloggers who by nature desire to be heard.

One time I happened across another web site (this was way before Flickr) that was using a photo from Newsome.Org as its logo. I wrote a mostly friendly email and suggested that if were going to use the photo they should credit the photographer (my then brother in law). They never responded but the logo was changed. A little odd, but no big deal.

But now that some people believe you can make money with blogs (you can, but you can also make money playing basketball and the odds are better that you’ll become an NBA star than that you can live indoors based on blog money), the game has changed. Much like musicians, who start out as artists but once in a blue moon catch lightning in a bottle and descend into money management induced madness, bloggers who believe that their site is a potential money-maker have a lot of good reasons to protect their intellectual property. Stated another way, when some dude appropriates one of my graphics, so what. But if someone steals one of my songs or content from a blog that has financial prospects, that’s a horse of another color.

I read two posts today from bloggers who have seemingly been ripped off. The first, from JKOnTheRun (another Houston guy whose web site somehow won’t let me add a Trackback because while I live near Houston, my web server is in Pittsburgh), involves the use by a company he used to be associated with of a name and graphic very similar to his blog. The second one by Jason Calacanis seems to be a concerted effort by someone to duplicate Weblogs look and feel. Jason is quite a bit less diplomatic than JK, which should make for interesting reading in the days ahead.

I don’t know where the legal line falls when it comes to this sort of thing, but this is a problem that isn’t going to go away. To the contrary, add the prospect of making money and it will become a free-for-all out there.

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What Ed Said

rootkitAfter I posted the update below, I read Ed Bott’s excellent takes on the Sony spyware issue here, here and here.

I think Ed nailed it, although I don’t think Sony’s lame attempt at placating consumers by issuing the patch that isn’t really a patch is much of a step in any positive direction.

Sony is going to continue to get slammed about this until they do the right thing. This will be an interesting litmus test of the power of bloggers to generate a policy changing buzz. I hope we succeed.

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Sony Tries But Not Hard Enough

Update to my earlier post about Sony BMG installing spyware on computers.

It seems that Sony has noticed the wave of bad press it is deservedly getting over this mess. In response, Sony has issued a patch to antivirus software makers. The problem, however, is that the patch does not delete the wrongfully installed software- it simply reveals the previously hidden files, allegedly making them less likely to be exploited by viruses.

Consumers who want the software removed? They are forced to “contact [Sony’s] customer support service for instructions.”

Not good enough. My boycott remains in effect.

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RanchoCast Beta 2

When it rains it pours. I did another beta of our RanchoCast podcast tonight.

Update: Here’s the list of the episodes that survived.

This one actually has a discernable theme- great songwriting. It has songs from Steve Pride, The Star Room Boys and others. It even has a musical history lesson about Jesse James.

So far it’s just me on the mike, but Cassidy has promised to do a podcast with me this weekend.

Feedback is welcome- if the sound is bad, let me know. If I sound like an idiot, I already know that and am working on it.

No More Sony CDs

rootkitI love Sony products. Other than my plasma TVs, both of which are Panasonic, I generally buy Sony electronics. My DVD players, my tube TVs, my digital camera- all Sonys.

But I will not buy another Sony BMG CD as long as they continue to put spyware-like DRM on their CDs. If that means forever, then forever it will be.

As Dwight Silverman and Download Squad reported today, Mark Russinovich at software developer Sysinternals discovered that a Sony CD installed a rootkit on his computer. A rootkit is way for someone to hide files and even programs on someone’s computer without their knowledge. It is a way for malicious spyware and other unwanted programs to hide on a computer.

The bottom line is that the Sony BMG CD appears to have installed a rootkit on Mark’s computer without his permission or knowledge, all in the name of limiting his ability to play (these CDs can only be played on a computer using the program that comes on the CD itself, not with Windows Media Player, etc.) and copy the music he paid for. A rootkit can be used by virus writers and other unauthorized interlopers to control a remote computer or steal or destroy the data on the computer. In other words, this is bad mojo that should have never been installed on his computer without his knowledge and informed consent.

To make bad matters worse, the software was difficult to uninstall- there was no uninstall utility (the “uninstall” option that usually appears either in Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs, or as an option in the program’s Start Menu folder. When Mark removed the software manually, it disabled his CD drive- making it totally unusable.

Howard Hoy, one of the readers of Dwight’s post, contacted Sony and asked for instructions on how to remove the wrongfully installed software. He was told to install a program made by the same company who created the rootkit for Sony- a program that could potentially do even more damage to his computer (Howard has a photo of the install screen here).

Here are my suggestions:

1) Boycott all copy protected music CDs. Most of them have a notice stating that the disc is sopy-protected. Amazon has started identifying CDs that are copy protected (as pointed out by Howard in a comment to Dwight’s post).

2) Disable autoplay on your computer.

The way to solve this growing problem is to create enough media buzz to perhaps get Congress involved and to vote with our pocketbooks. My pocketbook votes no.

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My Favorite Records: Blue Mountain – Dog Days

This is the seventh part in my series of favorite records.

One of my favorite alt. country bands is Blue Mountain, lead by husband and wife team of Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt. I think all of their records are excellent, but my favorite is still the first one I ever heard, Dog Days.

This is one of those all too rare records that has nothing but excellent songs on it. I’d love to list my favorites, but they’re all great songs. Soul Sister was the first song that grabbed my attention, reminding me of more than one girl I knew growing up:

First time that I saw her was the summer I turned 14. She was sitting on the hood of a car, at the drive in show. I saw a tear roll down her face, as she gazed up at the screen. And her black hair in the wind began to blow.

Let’s Go Running is a mid-tempo guitar driven rocker that would be a standout on almost any other record. Here, it’s just another excellent song.

Wink is a wistful acoustic number about a letter and a loss- like many songs, it’s about a woman who’s gone, but like the good ones, it creates a mood and let’s you fill in the blanks with your own memories.

ZZQ is a tribute to a radio station listened to while driving the back roads:

Ten miles north of Jackson stood a tower, with 100,000 watts of power. In the parking lot after school, the skynard nation rolled the knob to 102.

Jimmy Carter is a mostly sincere and slightly tongue in cheek tribute to my favorite President and the first song I play for someone when introducing this record:

In the bicentennial summer of our faded glory land a bright new face appeared upon the scene. Of an honest peanut farmer by the name of Jimmy Carter. His eyes were set on every school boys dream.

There are many other fine songs on this record. Anyone looking to build an alt. country library would do well to start with this record.

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Halloween

Halloween-781743

We went to the Fenrichs’ tonight for our annual Halloween party. It was raining like cats and dogs for most of the night, but we still managed to do some trick or treating and the kids had a big time.

Raina, putting her pregnant tummy to good use, was a jack-o-lantern. Delaney was Ariel (the mermaid, not Prospero’s ghostly servant, but that would have been cool too). I was a werewolf and Cassidy was a “spooky spirit” (Delaney has Cassidy’s wig on in the photo) Rachael (Cassidy’s pal) was a groovy witch. All of the kids and most of the grown-ups were in full costume atire. We had a great time walking around the neighborhood.

It was a lot of fun.

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100 Blogs in 100 Days

Duncan Riley has a feature at The Blog Herald, an excellent blog that has been on my daily reading list forever, called 100 Blogs in 100 Days.

Newsome.Org was selected for today, day number 54 (which, perhaps appropriately, is also Halloween). I am truly honored to be selected. I have blogged quite a bit about how hard it is for a relatively new blog to get noticed, and this is, without a doubt, the best “notice” we have received. I have found a lot of interesting blogs via this feature, so hopefully a few folks will find me.

Many thanks Duncan!

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