Funk Babblings

A while back I started reading the liberal/feminist (plus some comments on music) blog pandagon_net/Pandagon, co-authored by a guy in Columbus and a woman in Austin. Today they (the LJ feed omits the author byline, but I have reason to believe it was her and not him) linked to a power-pop blog, which I found interesting.... but the best thing I found there was this and the page it links to:

I know, most of what I post here seems to be about cool music I've discovered, or am about to go see, or that others should go see. And these days most of it came to me via podcasts. So here's some more....

A band called Mutiny was recently played on The $250 Million Radio Show podcast. They call their music "folk punk for punk folk," while I'd call it "Celtish fiddle-punk." Really cool.


Also, I keep meaning to mention a couple podcasts that reach back to the past...

Old Wave Radio plays "new 80s music" - music that sounds like 80s music, but is current and generally from unsigned bands. It's become a favorite of mine. Of course Manda and the Marbles were on an early show.
The Dorktones.com Podcast, hosted by a Dutch retro-60s band, plays a mix of obscure 60s music and modern music that sounds like 60s music, and it's pretty much impossible to tell the difference.

Do you need to build a hyperspace bypass? Or are you just feeling remarkably antisocial? Well, you might find this feasability study to be useful.

I've now been listening to some podcasts for about a month, and I've found some great stuff, some of which I've already mentioned.

( My Favorite Podcasts )
( How I get them )


Update: I haven't listened to it yet, but The Dragon Page ("Literary Concepts in Fantasy and Sci-Fi") looks like something a lot of my friends might enjoy. They also have a nice nontechnical introduction to podcast listening for the uninitiated.

Update 2: AP just put out a story on podcasting. Also, I forgot to mention BandTrax earlier, so that's now on the list.

Lately I've been hearing about the phenomenon of "podcasting", which is sort of audio blogging with RSS feeds used for downloading the audio to portable MP3 players, particularly iPods. (The latest way it caught my attention was a discussion on NPR's "On The Media".) One interesting side aspect of the whole thing is one of the main promoters and enablers of podcasting is a former MTV VJ, Adam Curry, through his ipodder web site and software.

So this evening I decided to take a look at what sort of podcasts are available. I started at ipodder, found the directory of podcasts, went to the category listing, chose Music, Independent Music, and Alt/Modern Rock, and saw a list of three podcasts. "IndieFeed Alternative/Modern Rock Channel" sounded most interesting to me, so I loaded that into my RSS reader and found 15 entries. I clicked on the latest one, and found.... Manda & The Marbles, a favorite Columbus band that I used to go see play in the basement of Donato's when they were just The Marbles.

It was quite odd to go from hearing an NPR discussion on podcasting to downloading my first podcasting feed and discovering that it's a band I know personally.

Now to figure out the best way to (auto-)download and listen to podcasts with Linux and without an iPod. Maybe (with the help of CD-RWs) it'll be another reason to get an MP3/CD player in my car....

Update: Podcast Alley seems to be an easier place to find podcasts than ipodder is.

The Internet is big, really big. That's obvious. But what isn't necessarily so obvious is that it actually looks different to different people. (I'm not talking about browser differences, that's a separate issue.) Everyone has a different set of sites that they frequent, and for each person the Internet looks like that collection of sites.

So here's what the Internet looks like to me.... ( Read more... )

Wired has a great article about BitTorrent. Besides interviewing the author and briefly explaining how BitTorrent works, I like that the article spends a lot of time on the issue of using BitTorrent for TV show timeshifting -- "the Internet becomes a giant TiVo." That's the most interesting aspect of BitTorrent for me, but it's one that normally gets ignored in the press because the movie and record industries draw so much attention.


BTW, thanks to the Blogdex RSS feed (aka blogdex on LJ, though that's not how I read it) for pointing this article out to me. Blogdex is great for keeping up with what stories are making the rounds of the "blogosphere". (The right-wing warblogs do hold a bit too much sway in the index for my taste, but then the rest of us probably hold too much sway for their taste, so it's fair.)