Clea's Cave

Must-See Video From the NCMR Conference

Do you laze about on Sunday morning, listening to tedious pundits spinning their usual predictable spew?  i confess that i often do.  Instead of fuming and talking back to the television, here are some really inspiring words from Bill Moyers yesterday at the 2008 National Conference For Media Reform in Minneapolis.  He sets the framework, and spells out why you should care about this conference, then take a spin through all the clips.  i doubt you'll tire of the diverse messages, and funny Fox News footage where the conference is outed by Bill O'Reilly as the "craziest far left" people in America!

You are implored not to miss Lawrence Lessig's address on the connection between government corruption and media reform.  He gives the tightest presentation i've seen yet on how we need to prioritize our fight to rescue our democracy.  You can see more at Change Congress.

Eat Them Up, Yum!

In case you don't read Boing Boing, or dig around on YouTube, here is the original video for Barnes & Barnes' Fish Heads, with Bill Paxton!  i'm tripping because i found this right after watching tonight's wonderful episode of Big Love.

This is one of my all time favorite videos.  There is one particular memory of this screened one night before an incredible Flipper show in Ann Arbor.  Good times!

David Byrne on DRM

You see me intermittently rant about copyfight and DRM issues here from time to time.  i'm no expert, but my background as an artist and DJ makes me one of the obsessed.  This journal entry from David Byrne's blog voices my frustration much better than i have, and, hey, David Byrne.  Some folks might listen.  Actually, it would appear that lots of folks are as CD sales, especially among big label artists, continue to drop.

A Tedious Song Transformed

Got your sound on?  Got a high speed connection?  Then click here.  And check out the dude on the left.  He's my shordurpursav.
From Kallisti at Blastmilk.

You Might Think I'm Cranky

... when you look at how i handled the meme below.  It's really a cool thing, originally from Willworks LJ , and spied at  Johnny Bacardi and Pop Culture Gadabout.  It goes like this:

Go to http://www.musicoutfitters.com/ .  Enter the year you graduated in the search function.  Bold for the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate, and leave alone the ones you don't remember or don't care about.  Underline your favorite.

Here's where i went wrong. i don't not care or recall anything on my list, so if it's bold i love it, if it's got a strike through it i hate it, and the untouched ones on my list are just OK, i like/not love them. i wanted to follow along, but i swear the year (1971) and the circumstances of Detroit radio at the time were such that i wasn't listening to charted radio at all.  By 1971, we had real freeform radio on WABX, and they were playing fewer than half these songs. But, with golden hindsight, here's my uncharacteristically  black-or-white list:

1971

1. Joy To The World, Three Dog Night 
2. Maggie May / (Find A) Reason To Believe, Rod Stewart 
3. It's Too Late / I Feel The Earth Move, Carole King 
4. One Bad Apple, Osmonds 
5. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, Bee Gees 
6. Indian Reservation, Raiders 
7. Go Away Little Girl, Donny Osmond 
8. Take Me Home, Country Roads, John Denver 
9. Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me), Temptations 
10. Knock Three Times, Pawn 
11. Me And Bobby Mcgee, Janis Joplin 
12. Tired Of Being Alone, Al Green 
13. Want Ads, Honey Cone 
14. Smiling Faces Sometimes, Undisputed Truth 
15. Treat Her Like A Lady, Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose 
16. You've Got A Friend, James Taylor 
17. Mr. Big Stuff, Jean Knight 
18. Brown Sugar, Rolling Stones 
19. Do You Know What I Mean, Lee Michaels 
20. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Joan Baez
21. What's Going On, Marvin Gaye 
22. Uncle Albert-Admiral Halsey, Paul McCartney 
23. Aint No Sunshine, Bill Withers 
24. Signs, Five Man Electrical Band 
25. She's A Lady, Tom Jones 
26. Superstar, Murray Head and The Trinidad Singers 
27. I Found Someone Of My Own, Free Movement 
28. Amos Moses, Jerry Reed 
29. Temptation Eyes, The Grass Roots 
30. Superstar, Carpenters 
31. My Sweet Lord / Isn't It A Pity, George Harrison 
32. Sweet And Innocent, Donny Osmond 
33. Put Your Hand In The Hand, Ocean 
34. Chick-a-boom, Daddy Dewdrop 
35. For All We Know, Carpenters 
36. Help Me Make It Through The Night, Sammi Smith 
37. Rainy Days And Mondays, Carpenters 
38. If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot 
39. Gypsy, Tramps And Thieves, Cher 
40. Never Can Say Goodbye, Jackson 5
41. Rose Garden, Lynn Anderson 
42. Don't Pull Your Love, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds 
43. It Don't Come Easy, Ringo Starr 
44. Mr. Bojangles, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band 
45. I Love You For All Seasons, Fuzz 
46. Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get, Dramatics 
47. That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be, Carly Simon 
48. If You Really Love Me, Stevie Wonder 
49. Spanish Harlem, Aretha Franklin 
50. I Don't Know How To Love Him, Helen Reddy 
51. Yo-yo, Osmonds 
52. Bridge Over Troubled Water, Aretha Franklin 
53. Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted, Partridge Family 
54. Draggin' The Line, Tommy James 
55. Proud Mary, Ike and Tina Turner 
56. Beginnings / Color My World, Chicago 
57. Stay Awhile, Bells 
58. Sweet City Woman, Stampeders 
59. Me And You And A Dog Named Boo, Lobo 
60. Another Day / Oh Woman, Oh Why, Paul McCartney
61. If, Bread 
62. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), Marvin Gaye 
63. One Toke Over The Line, Brewer and Shipley 
64. She's Not Just Another Woman, 8th Day 
65. Bring The Boys Home, Freda Payne 
66. I Just Want To Celebrate, Rare Earth 
67. Never Ending Song Of Love, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends 
68. Easy Loving, Freddy Hart 
69. Liar, Three Dog Night 
70. Stick-up, Honey Cone 
71. Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, Mac and Katie Kissoon 
72. Love Story (Where Do I Begin), Andy Williams 
73. Wild World, Cat Stevens 
74. When You're Hot, You're Hot, Jerry Reed 
75. Funky Nassau, Beginning Of The End 
76. If Not For You, Olivia Newton-John 
77. Groove Me, King Floyd 
78. Watcmng Scoity Grow, Bobby Goldsboro 
79. Woodstock, Matthews' Southern Comfort 
80. Amazing Grace, Judy Collins
81. I Hear You Knocking, Dave Edmunds 
82. Lonely Days, Bee Gees 
83. Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again, Fortunes 
84. Won't Get Fooled Again, Who 
85. Trapped By A Thing Called Love, Denise Lasalle 
86. Mama's Pearl, Jackson 5 
87. Timothy, Buoys 
88. I Woke Up In Love This Morning, Partridge Family 
89. Theme From "Shaft", Isaac Hayes 
90. If I Were Your Woman, Gladys Knight and The Pips 
91. I Am...I Said, Neil Diamond 
92. Wedding Song (There Is Love), Paul Stookey 
93. Don't Knock My Love, Pt. 1, Wilson Pickett 
94. Love Her Madly, The Doors 
95. Here Comes The Sun, Richie Havens 
96. Sweet Mary, Wadsworth Mansion 
97. Right On The Tip Of My Tongue, Brenda and The Tabulations 
98. One Less Bell To Answer, Fifth Dimension 
99. Riders On The Storm, The Doors 
100. It's Impossible, Perry Como

i'm challenging Neal over at From Belfast Commons , even though his will probably look a lot like mine!  i hate many of the charters from 1971, and admire the selection Bill got from 1968!  Guess you can tell this old hippie became a punk in not too many years...

The Influence Of the iPod On Radio

... will it lead to the return of personal, live DJs with 70's freeform style?  Rebecca's Pocket points us to Jesse Walker's piece on Jack stations in Reason.  i also like what Rebecca Blood says:

Jesse Walker considers a trend in radio programming — shuffle radio — and reflects on what radio really needs to do to compete with iPod. He's absolutely right. The time is ripe for old-fashioned album-oriented rock stations (read: personally, eccentrically, broadly programmed radio) to make a comeback. And guess what? If radio doesn't do it, motivated amateurs will. And when those amateurs gain a strong enough following, they will eventually support themselves with advertising, as radio stations do, or offer subscription services to their most avid fans.
As the world becomes more and more information-overloaded — and as mass amateurization spreads into every area that once was the domain of professionals — people will be more and more willing to pay for great Filters.

It's Nice When You're Big Enough To Admit You Suck

From the always engaging Discordian Research Technology, comes this ridiculous stunt, as revealed by Stay Free! Daily.  Radio is becoming increasingly irrelevant, but you have to laugh when Clear Channel poses as a pirate station to cannibalize itself ...it's just too good!  Here is a taste:

The text on this page was copied (on 5/24/05) from FreeRadioOhio.org, the website for an Ohio-based "pirate" radio station that turned out to be owned by Clear Channel. After word got out that Clear Channel owned Free Radio Ohio, the company promptly took the site down.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The following is a list of radio stations in Northeast Ohio that should be forced to turn off their transmitters and turn their licenses over to the Federal Communications Commission.

WHLO (640  AM) obviously operated by communist, WHLO consists of nothing more than right wing rhetoric dispensed at toxic levels. WHLO features overbearing personalities that have little or no knowledge of actual facts. They allow their lack of knowledge to never get in the way of pushing W¹s plan and opinions upon us like a dealer addicted to his own crack. WHLO airs Quinn and Rose in the morning followed by a show that is so bad it was dropped by a Cleveland station, Glenn Beck. Speaking of those addicted to drugs, Rush Limbaugh follows beck and is the lead in to the Right¹s political poster boy Sean Hannity. After Hannity on WHLO, is the gay bashing Michael Savage, then the Laura Ingram Show. Where are our Barf bags?

WAKR (1590  AM) Barely a radio station at all, WAKR is now a shadow of it's former self. Back in the day you could listen to 1590 to hear everything that was going on in Akron . Now we get small segments of grammatically incorrect newscasts voiced by what appears to our ears to be strangers off the street. The morning show on WAKR is hosted by Ray Horner, he¹s the whipping boy for the Mayors office in Akron , not to mention Council President Summerville. If Marco wants to fill a pothole on Wooster Ave , WAKR will devote a 20 minute morning segment to it. You should hear the segment called the ŒEntertainment report" which features a 15 minute interview with a guy who installs cable television in Akron This airs every morning. It¹s just insane enough for us not to make it up. The rest of the day is filled with music piped in from a satellite hosted by DJ¹s in Los Angeles . The Music's okay, but what ever happened to " Akron's news Authority"?

There's much more, glommed from the FreeRadioOhio.org website before Clear Channel was exposed and took it down.  The New York Times outed them (i'm not linking because of dumbass registration requirement) as well, and a Clear Channel drone told the NYT reporter that they were building the buzz for a progressive talk radio station.

The vigorous and entertaining comments on Stay Free!'s story are hopeful that the news has come out, and the people of Ohio won't fall for it.  i have some experience in radio; on air, in music and news, and also reporting, copy writing and production.  And i can tell you that this fiasco won't hurt the station's future a bit.  i mean, if we had an FCC following its mandate, Radio Free Ohio would lose its license, but we don't.  And the fact is that radio listeners ... just don't listen.  It's the nature of the beast. Think that annoying, omnipresent song began being overplayed when you got sick of it?  By the time you notice it every DJ and music director in the country are sick to death of it, and thousands more listeners just decided it's their new favorite song.  Not enough people intentionally seek out a number on a dial to make a difference.  It's a supercasual medium, much more than, say, television.  The push button status in a car radio is earned by surfing and habit, not strategy. Listeners are barely paying attention to the stations they choose. Very few of them will deselect a new station in advance, though they might take months to find it...without publicity. The biggest threat RFO faces is Akron's Air America affiliate, and that battle will be fought comparatively, not preemptively. End of rant.  i'm sorry, it's radio ... i could go onandonaboutit.