slamboard

Last Monday, I was on a train reading a newly purchased copy of Death of a Salesman. I can only vaguely remember reading it in school and I was surprised and a bit creeped out at its relevance.

There have been many of Pop Culture References made to this award winning play. I spotted one that hasn’t been cataloged in Wikipedia. One of my least favorite bands, Nickelback, has a song called Leader of Men. One line of lyrics echoes Biff Lomans rebuke of his father’s American Dream.

I am Not a Leader of Men

If Biff and Willy Loman were real, they would probably be a bit disheartened to find that Nickelback has pushed them all the way to the 4th page of a Google query for this line. I know I am.

Death isn’t current enough to be effectively used a metaphor for the American political scene or the present economic crisis but I hope that somebody close to GWB makes some kind of Biff remark that he won’t get.

I used to own a windup phonograph player. In what must have been a coincidence, it broke down in the midst of the Y2K hysteria. This left us with no way to enjoy the 78RPM records that we had picked up at an estate auction.

I eventually took it apart and rigged it up so that it would kind of work, but the piece that had worn out was designed to regulate the speed. I wish I still had those records with me now that you can buy something like a
USBTurntable
that enables you to easily make a digital recording of those rare musical performances.

I was fascinated with audio recording as a teenager and I once had a very inconvenient and complicated system set up to enable me to overdub a few separate tracks of my guitar playing. It involved several portable cassette players a reverb box from Radioshack and a LOT of cables. These days there are free virtual sound studios available for download, so all you need is a PC and a microphone. With something like a USB turntable, you could come home with some funky yardsale records and amuse yourself for days making mashups.

The video below has nothing to do with my post, I just enjoy it.

Back in the mid 90s, I was visiting the house that I was in the midst of purchasing and while I was talking to the owner his kids were destroying his cherished record collection in the basement. I didn’t come to their defense at the time, but they are a lot like Frisbees.

I would advise anyone who has cherished music on vinyl to make digital backups. If you want to share the music, you can easily post it on YouTube. Use Windows Movie Maker and import the audio, grab a cool still image of the artist from Google and add the film aging effect and boom, you’re done.

The USB turntable pictured above makes the process very easy. Click the link to find out more about this innovative product. It’s where it’s at.

…When Prince complains.

I wanted to listen to an acoustic cover of Purple Rain on YouTube today. I found out that Prince and his record company have silenced all the videos (or forced the uploaders to silence them).

One resourceful guy who had produced an instructional video on how to play the song simply put an off-site link to his audio in the description.

Over the last few years, many musical artists have reacted to the copyright infringing reality in different ways. Radiohead let people pay whatever they wanted for their recent release. Metallica sued Napster and also some universities.

Some artists that are not in the mainstream have tried adding personal extras to albums that are purchased legally.

If you NEED to listen to a Prince song, you can do a keyword search and then sort your results by the date added. Prince has to sleep sometime.

Frank Zappa was on CNN back in 1986. He was talking about censorship and he told Robert Novak that the USA was going down a path to becoming a Fascist Theocracy. Robert Novak appeared to be incredulous at the time. In recent years he has been a messenger boy for an administration lead by a guy who calls the constitution a goddamned piece of paper. George Bush is on a mission from God, that’s a bit theocratic. Frank Zappa is dead.

War veteran James Blunt is flying high on the US airwaves (occasionally), while in much of the rest of the World he is fucking high. Recording artists often self censor at the behest of their management in order to be radio friendly. Warning labels help steer responsible parents away from violent, explicit and/or profane music. Many parents who would claim to be responsible let their kids buy video games that have worse content than any music CD.

Some guy named Larry wants volunteers to help him with sales of an Obama Music CD. I find this to be kinda cheesy and sleazy. Some of the biggest names in music contributed to a few singles inspired by Barack Obama and they were FREE on YouTube and elsewhere. Whatever Larry is selling is in support of Larry.

Obama Music CD Distribution - Volunteers - (Denver)

Reply to: Larry@requestusa.com
Date: 2008-08-06, 2:48PM MDT

Need Help putting out 4″ X 4″ 7 Song CD Flyers and CD Sales for Obama “A BLACK MAN CAN BE PRESIDENT” Song. Contact Larry at 303-730-2100

* Location: Denver
* Compensation: Nego
* Telecommuting is ok.
* This is a part-time job.