Category: Radio

The truth is out there…. waaay out there

Conspiracy theories abound, and all of them make me cover my ears and hum. Not because I don’t want to hear the “truth,” but because I don’t want to hear nonsense. Keith Allen, the father of Lily Allen, the bad girl of British Pop, has a documentary pushing the idea that Princess Diana was murdered by the Royal Family.

http://youtu.be/V5PFWc8DgFw

When has any conspiracy theory ever held up to serious examination? “Water-tight” cases were made that JFK was killed by Castro. No, wait. The Mob did it. Or was it really LBJ? Of course we didn’t actually go to the Moon. And 9/11 was an inside job. A current example is the so-called birther crowd. They demanded to see Obama’s full birth certificate from Hawaii, and when he produced it they declared it to be a fake.

Today’s Diane Rehm radio talk show featured author Jonathan Kay, who has written a book called Among the Truthers.

[audio:http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/305/510071/136247861/WAMU_136247861.mp3|titles=Diane Rehm: Jonathan Kay ‘Among the Truthers’]

Where things get messy is with the Gulf of Tonkin and Saddam Hussein’s WMD. These have been proven to my satisfaction to have been hyped threats, with the intent of justifying military action. The problem is, from these facts people make the leap to saying that because the government has been deceitful in some instances, then FDR wanted Pearl Harbor to happen and a UFO really did crash in Roswell, New Mexico.

Barnes Newberry’s new show!

This just in from Boston-based DJ Barnes Newberry, whose radio show “Highway 61 Revisited” was part of my Saturday mornings for ten years:

RADIO NEWS! Thrilled to announce I will be on-air again very soon with my new show My Back Pages on mvyradio (mvyradio.com). Great station, fine music choices and terrific staff! Show will be Saturdays, 8 am -12 noon, available online only. All shows will be archived. Start date to be announced shortly. Please spread the word. If you were a fan of my old Highway 61 Revisited program, this will be right down your alley!

Thanks Barnes, this is great news! I’m looking forward to hearing you again. MVYradio.com is a great Internet radio station, and it has a high quality 96 Kbps audio stream. After you get started at the station I will become a member and send them some bucks in your name.

Happiness is feeling Crumb-y

A week ago I called Robert Crumb a curmudgeon, and he is, but he enjoys talking about his collection of 78 rpm records. Michael Cumella, aka MAC, snagged an in-person interview with R. Crumb for his Antique Phonograph Music Program on WFMU. The first hour of two is on the audio player, and some of it is on YouTube. MAC will post the rest of his conversation with Crumb next week.

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Apr/WFMU_Crumb.mp3|titles=WFMU – Robert Crumb talks about 78 rpm records]

Apple-cation

This quote had me spitting up my tea.

“Apple is a very canny company that doesn’t necessarily originate ideas, but its core strength is in the implementation,” said Little. “This what is what Apple is about: it may one day be a first mover, but in most cases it’s a second mover where it has implemented things across a platform and ecosystem in a much, much better way than others do it.”

It’s from this article on the Huffington Post, which has more second-guessing about Amazon’s Cloud Player service. So it’s come to this, huh? Apple is now like Microsoft — an imitator, but an excellent implementer? I don’t think Apple’s at that point yet, with the iPhone and iPad being innovative, market-leading products (I own neither). However, in a couple of recent examples, Apple has been a follower. Apple took Roku’s lead with a small, diskless streaming video player, and Amazon is offering a service that Apple doesn’t. This quote in the article also seems off-the-mark to me.

“I’m not convinced that there is a huge consumer need” being filled by the offering, said Carl Howe, director of consumer research at the Yankee Group. “I have yet to see this as a big deal for consumers. It goes back to whether consumers are looking for a cloud-based music streaming service for music they already own. Do consumers really want to pay more for music they already own?”

The first five gig on Amazon Cloud Drive are free and available for uploading whatever music files you already have — the catch being they need to be MP3’s. (Correction: AAC is also supported.) For $20/year you can get 20 GB of online music streaming. Maybe that’s not enough for an entire music library, but it’s plenty for what you’re currently into hearing. Once Amazon offers Cloud Drive access on other platforms, especially the Logitech Squeezbox Radio and Roku player, it will be servicing my consumer need very well.

Roxette’s got something on the radio

I still don’t know if I’ve ever heard something by Lady Gaga, and I’m not even sure she’s not a guy with a gimmick. But thanks to BBC Radio 2 I know about the music duo Roxette from Sweden, aka: ABBAland. When I first heard their new song, She’s Got Nothing On (But the Radio), with its great Europop sound, I was surprised to learn they’ve been cranking out tunes for 25 years.

Amazon’s Cloudy future

The new Amazon Cloud Player works only with a web browser or on an Android device. Before making it available on other platforms, perhaps Amazon is waiting to see how the music industry reacts to its otherwise bold move. An article on Ars Technica has the headline, “Music industry will force licenses on Amazon Cloud Player—or else,” but I hope Ed Bott on ZDNet has it right, explaining “How Amazon has outsmarted the music industry (and Apple).” There are laws, and there are contracts, and I don’t know if Amazon’s lawyers advised Jeff Bezos that he would be in violation of one or the other by introducing the Cloud Player, but so far none of the big music labels or the RIAA have filed for a cease and desist order.

Back in the early 80’s, when cassettes were an essential audio component, many LP’s came with a warning on the sleeve that said, “HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC… and it’s illegal.” And that was before CD’s! Well, neither claim turned out to be true. I remember when Disney wouldn’t allow its pre-recorded video cassettes to be rented. They could only be purchased, and they even came with a message saying that, embossed into the cassette. Eventually, Disney had to relent to the reality of the times and, of course, video rentals became a huge revenue source for the studio and helped to fund its resurgent animation department.

Time and again, the music and movie industries have had to react to new technologies. Silent movies didn’t survive talkies, but movies survived the competition from radio and, 20 years later, television. The only way to succeed is to find a way to take advantage of the new technology. As I’ve pointed out before, Napster was predicted in 1972, so the music industry had plenty of warning of what was to come:

Since huge quantities of information can be computer-digitalized and transmitted, music researchers could, for example, swap records over the Net with “essentially perfect fidelity.” So much for record stores (in present form).

Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972

The controversy over this latest music distribution method will be fun to watch, because Amazon isn’t a lone college kid sharing MP3’s with friends, who can be easily intimidated. If pushed, Amazon can push back very, very hard. Similarly, the movie studios want to squeeze Netflix, but the question is, without Amazon and Netflix who’s left to distribute audio and video — Wal*Mart, Best Buy, and Target? None of them are still committed to selling physical media.