Some music for today, from the 30s (I can’t track down a specific year):

Bix Beiderbecke’s ‘Krazy Kat‘

For all you Mac-oriented folks out there: A new usenet newsreader called Unison. It does for usenet what Acquisition did for gnutella, which is to make it Mac-like.

One of the big-joy moments of starting to use this software was that I could download an hour’s-worth of Duke Ellington on NBC’s Big Band Remote in 1953, from alt.binaries.sounds.78rpm-era. At 50kbps. Just by clicking. Clickin’ and boppin’.

I’ve linked to Bob Harris’ travelogue here before. Dude goes on a ’round the world tour and sends back essays. I’ve been reading it because, well, I’m contemplating something similar myself.

But regardless: The one from Raratonga is my favorite so far, and I think it deserves a special mention.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft declares existence of new axis of evil: evil chemistry, evil biology, and alludes to evil physics!

OK, forget the last entry about Stump. Last night I went to the thrift store, looking for a few items, and while I didn’t find what I was looking for, I found a copy of an album by a band I’ve been passively interested in, Hoven Droven (the album is called ‘Grov’).

They’re from Sweden, and were part of a folk fusion movement that happened throughout Scandinavia in the mid-to-late 90s (and is still going on). The real stars of this movement were Hedningarna, and out of it a guy called Wimme has emerged as a sort of underground pop star, but Hoven Droven was (and is) the only band to really rock.

As evidence, here’s ‘Grottan,’ which is coyly listed on the back cover as a polka, which it is, strictly speaking. And from their web site: Here they are covering ‘Wish You Were Here.’

So I got ahold of a flier for something called a laptop battle. It’s the battle of the bands, but it’s all in your laptop. A battle of the GarageBands, one might say.

So I linked around a little bit, and found something really cool: A piece of software not unlike GarageBand, but with a different slant. It’s intended for live performance, it’s called Live, and put out by a company called Ableton. There’s a free demo for download, and it works with Macs and Windows. Lots of fun, but considerably more expensive than GarageBand.

I feel so freaking behind the times… I didn’t already know what a laptop battle was!

I’ve discovered that I don’t need to write any more complaining bitching-and-moaning ‘blogs. Why? John Shirley is on the job! Here’s some evidence.

Meanwhile, back in Las Vegas:

Paul W. (no relation, but eerie similarities) has a cordial discussion with Luciano Pavarotti’s corpse, by a canal in Venice.

Ok, that’s not really fair to Luciano, but the wax museum minder let slip that this figure depicts the man at 65 pounds lighter than he is at the moment.

Later that day, Paul finds himself looking up in awe at L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Paris, Texas. No, wait, Paris, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Why go to Europe? All it’s treasures are reproduced in loving ripoffery here in the US!

Thanks to Warren Ellis’ blog, I’m now listening to Radio Free Destruktobot, and thoroughly enjoying it.

Noisy, dark, and chaotic, but whoever’s doing this played some Evolution Control Committee, so everything’s alright.

So is this, like, the opposite of being a golddigger?

And this might just be the job for me.