Last.fm

So today I joined Last.fm. I was just online and wanted to listen to some music and thought, hey why don't I finally check this out and listen to some internet radio. I turned on my Last.fm player and was listening to the Black Keys and reading the news on the BBC and saw in their entertainment section that Last.fm was just bought out, yesterday, by the CBS Corporation. I don't know why this is so disappointing to me. I mean there is the standard feeling of not wanting something interesting like internet radio to get in the hands of the corporations, who'll utilizing ads, etc. etc. But I don't even really have any attatchment to Last.fm. I like the concept but I'm not really all that impressed with the selection of music on here. (If you don't know about Last.fm it's internet radio, except you set-up your own station, you tell the player what music you listen to and it reads what songs you have on your itunes or winamp and creates a playlist for you based on your musical interests. a great concept, excecuted with a hint of mediocrity)

Anyhow, I was disappointed by this news and I don't know what that says about me, because it really doesn't matter.

I hope I don't suck.

How is your day?

Fuck it, a digression on a week of rediscovery

All week I've been sifting through stacks of loose discs lying around in milk crates, on my bookshelf, and in my closer. These are the cd's I quit listening toor never listened to, from times when I thought it would be a good idea to burn twenty discs at once, listen to two of them and throw the rest into a pile for 'later listening.' Which is where they are now. The stacks accumlate, swallow a couple of my favorite discs and store some that I'm luke warm on. They are inevitably lost for a couple months to a year, when I clean my apartment and try to figure out something to do with all these stacks of cd's.

I sifted through a pile or two such as this early in the week and made some re-discoveries that I've enjoyed all over, regretted ever owning and a few that remain there so I am not shamed when people look through my collection. But the point of this lengthy introduction is that during this process I rediscovered The Squirrel Nut Zippers 1997 album 'Hot.' Some, unnamed, people I work with have given me shit for listening to it and other people have placated me with their smiles and nods in my car. (In my own damn car) But fuck it. I didn't accept for a while that I could still like a good swing/jazz album like this and that's how it ended up in the pile on my bookshelf in the first place. I'm not going to music snobbed into a corner.

I like this is album. It is good. For many reasons:
Katherine Whalen's uncanny resemblence to Billie Holiday. Solid solos. They don't get too 'swingy,' you know, in the way you remember Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, even at their best (see their cover of 'Minnie the Moocher'). But it mostly leaves the stale, musty flavor of the late 90's and nu-metal lingering in your mouth like a dirty sanchez. BBVD aged like milk, metal or ska, The SNZ are more like your proverbial wine. Great harmonies, fun, playful songs (remember 'Hell' and then remember that the rest of the album belittles that track, its raw) but you probably don't remember any of this and if you know me, you're probably surprised that I'm defending this. I don't care. It's good. I'm not ashamed that I was listening to it all week. That's all.

awful art of list-making or how I learned to stop worrying and accept my borderline OCD tendencies

So I'm a list maker. That's the first step. Admitting you've got a problem. I try to organize everything: to-do list, favorite movies, reading lists, piles of things to watch, my cd catalogues, my crates of vinyls, the bookshelf, websites I'm going to look at sometime soon, director's I should see, director's I already should have seen, director's I'm probably not going to see but if I don't know what to put on my netflix queue I should try one of them, which itself is a useless list because my netflix queue is always full because it is itself a list, always a full 500 films long.

I was somewhat comforted this winter as I was reading the 2006 Best American Non-Required reading and saw Matt Groening's introduction. He confesses to making absurd lists, having piles of magazines and books lying around his house that he'll never get to, and list of things he'll never read. But this onyl provoked me. He had ideas on his list of books to read that I hadn't gotten to yet, like of course I should have a list of biographies of US presidents that I should read. This is something that I, as an American, whether dissenting or not, should do, I should know about our history thoroughly, I should know about every presidency. Why? Why do I care? I'm setting myself up for disappointment. If this was the only list I had (in the realm of things to read) I wouldn't finish the list in the next decade.

But I make it anyway. I need it. Here I am trying to read a biography on Andrew Jackson, whom I care nothing about, because I feel like I should. I'm compelled to do it. So as I got bored I decided to look at a more interesting list of mine. I think this idea also came from Matt Groening's introduction, but I want to, by the end of the year, have read a novel from every year of the 20th century. It seems kind of silly, but I've got a good chunk done already, and I've already started doing this and have read some interesting novels, some I didn't like, but it reveals a lot about our history and our concerns by the subject matter that arises. But really I'll never finish this. So, fuck it. I'm reading a book written in 1985, that's all.

Dustin is currently reading 'White Noise'

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters, as well as those who are the targets of the plot.


just enjoyed this quote from the DeLillo novel.

I'm losing hope...

So this afternoon I've been paroozing websites that are discussing the impending doom of internet radio. If you aren't up on this here's the story: on March 2nd the Copyright Royalty Board decided to up the cost of royalties for internet radio providers, retroactivly and increasingly until 2010. I don't know if you listen to internet radio but I do, and this will effectively destroy small internet radio providers. stations like those available through college campuses across the country and Live365 will not be able to afford to continue running. This will leave the internet radio in the hands of the same people destroying the airwaves, stations like AOLradio will be the survivors (Jesus don't let it happen) if they even decide it's worth continuing. This also means increased advertising online (Jesus, ditto).

the other end of this is the artists will recieve more money, not much, but the reports say it will be around a couple hundred extra dollars per year. which seems insignificant, but it is surely significant to many artists. But the artists who will benefit from this extra dough are not going to be played as frequently as they are now.

Congress is catching on though. Senators Brownback and Wyden are introducing a bill (H.R. 2060 which you can read HERE) If this legislation doesn't go through your favorite internet radio stations are going to have to start accepting advertising or are going to start needing donations (god bless NPR but we all know how fucking annoying fund raising drives are). So write or call your representatives and get support for H.R. 2060. So if you want to know more about this (since I'm just skimming the surface) check out Last Plane to Jakarta for a blog post about this, or RIP Internet Radio for an article by Pitchfork, also visit Save Net Radio <- this is the best site for information, they are spearheading the movement to save the airwaves. As a host of an internet radio show I think that this is really important, (check out our site at the Local Point for info too)

And while you're at it (Pitchfork linked this in their article) here's a little reminder about who is running our country, we're in good hands, they are so in touch with the people MC Rove

here I go

A writer once put in his contributer's note "[The author] has, on more than one occasion, contemplated starting a blog, but wrestles with the notion that writing itself requires a healthy ego, while blogging requires an ego of immense proportions." Now, I'm not trying to single anyone out but...(David Doody, Twin Cities Luxury and Fashion May '07).
Well its true. It takes ego to write, I've got some, I'm using it now. Which is shown in the fact that I am even trying to begin writing a blog, which will be, essentially, meaningless, comma ridden, and bigoted. But here I am assuming someone will take the time to read this. (Which may or may not be bullshit, but I must somewhere actually believe someone will, otherwise why do this? Though if you saw me on the street and asked me, I'd tell you that no one will ever read it and I don't give a damn if they do, but this is a lie). So what will you see if you haven't been completely turned off yet? This lovely page layout and... I don't really know what self-important people do, talk about the music, books, movies, brands of underwear and kinds of cereal they like, because writers have to assume that the cereal they eat is better than the cereal their readers are eating. I ate Honey Nut cheerios this morning over a cup of coffee. It was delicious. You should try it.