Stats for my podcast - I was suprised, too...

Magnatune Rocks

I read about Magnatune in the most recent issue of Gramophone magazine.
Why Magnatune is better than iTunes

• They provide downloads of music for which you pay a "suggested fee", 50% of which goes directly back to the artist. The "suggested fee" defaults to $8, which I gladly paid. After using the service, I may even pay more the next time.
• For those of us who demand hi fidelity, iTunes doesn't really cut it. Although iTunes offers a wide selection, it allows little in terms of fidelity (at 128k AAC - about the quality of an 8-track). Magnatune, however, offers you a variety of different bitrates, including .wav from which you can burn a perfect CD, or rip files into high quality AAC or mp3 files.
• Magnagune encourages you to pass on the music you downloaded to three other people and don't include any onerous DRM restrictions on the downloads.
• You can stream the whole album before you buy it, and not just 30 seconds like on iTunes
• Although they don't offer a ton of music yet, they have a fantastic early music collection.

The site has a link to an article from USA Today on their service, and owner John Buckman has his own blog.

Even oboists need lawyers

I was doing some legal research this afternoon on plaintiff's burden of proof of damages and jury awards (yeah, pretty dull), and I stumbled on this case from 1942, Tabuteau v. London Guarantee & Accident Company, Limited, 351 Pa. 183; 40 A.2d 396; 1945 Pa. LEXIS 305. I almost fell over when I saw that the injured party was Marcel Tabuteau, the dean of American Oboists (and the actual dean of the Curtis Institute of Music). I wonder how many other oboists turned into lawyers, and stumbled on the case when researching Pennsylvania state law?

...Plaintiff testified that on Sunday afternoon, April 5,
1942, he was walking on the Parkway, between 15th and
16th Streets, in Philadelphia, when he stepped on something
on the sidewalk, "it was uneven ---- unlevel----... I
made a jump ---- it was as though I stepped on a live electric
wire. Naturally, I tried to get my balance. When I
landed on my feet I felt as though I was going to fall, but I
didn't. I felt pain in the lower part of my abdomen, and I
realized I could hardly walk. I put my hands one on each
groin, and I went home, and I felt some kind of sickness...
nausea." He said that when he arrived home he noticed
"Two little swellings [***3] on the groins", and that he
rested that day, and the next morning when he attempted
to rehearse with the orchestra he "felt a terrible stab in
the right side." Plaintiff is a distinguished musician, the
first oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, of which he has
been a member for many years. He testified that an oboe
is a wood--wind instrument and that in order "to obtain
emotion of tone it takes great physical effort." Being unable
to play his instrument, he went home, and on April
7th saw his doctor, and was informed of his condition and
advised to wear a truss.
The truss was some comfort but not satisfactory, and
plaintiff continued to suffer pain when blowing the oboe.
He could only perform partially and had a substitute to
take his place when he could not continue. [*185] Before
the accident he was required to practice two to three hours
of pain in the groin when he exerted pressure by playing
the oboe. He had previously performed at four or five concerts
a week during the season, but he could not do this
after the accident. He lost movie and radio work because
of his injury. His doctor testified that the [***4] truss
did not correct his condition and he advised an operation,
which was performed. Before the accident plaintiff was
in good health, and had never had pain in the inguinal
region. During the period of incapacity he had no other
disabling illness, except the hernia condition...

What a great way to build your music collection

Replay Radio is really cool. Most of the radio shows I love don't have podcasts, and Replay enables you to record live streaming radio even when you're not by your PC (or simply forget to listen). You can then transfer them onto your portable device. I have an entire week set up so that my PC opens radio streams from all around the world at designated times, and records the radio shows I want to hear.

If the stream is not in RealAudio or Windows Media, you'll have to install another player on your PC (like WinAmp) that has the right codec to understand the stream. But Replay Radio will record streams in any format for which you have the appropriate player by opening the player on its own, and will even record any stream for which you designate a URL; if you don't know what the URL of a radio stream is, you can right click it, "Copy Link Location," and paste it into your scheduler. It even copies files and adds them to your iTunes library. Because there are lots of ways to stream audio, you may need to tweak your settings a little bit, but I really love this program.

Every radio station devotes different bitrates for streaming. For example, the NPR station in New York,WNYC supports a Windows stream at 20k and an MP3 stream at 32k and 96k, while
WFIU in Bloomington, IN, offers a Wiindows Stream at 128k and a Real Media Stream at 44k. I am not as picky for talk radio shows as I am for live performances, for which a higher bitrate (and therefore higher fidelity) is key.

And two great resources to find out what's on when are Allegro!, which has a listing of musical public radio programs availabile on streaming audio, and Public Radio Fan, which has just about every public radio station and show imaginable.

Review: Kronos String Quartet: You've Stolen My Heart

The latest project undertaken by the Kronos Quartet - You've Stolen My Heart - is a " vibrant homage to the pre-eminent composer of classic Bollywood, Rahul Dev 'R.D.' Burman." Ugh.

Take the following with a caveat: the singing on this recording is wonderful. Kronos also plays far better than an ad-hoc Bollywood orchestra, and used their market clout to enlist viruosi like Zakkir Hussein (tabla) and Wu Man (pipa) to toot along. And, it goes without saying that Asha Bhosle's voice is both beautiful and intriguing.

That's where the value ends. This recording is like having the Philadelphia Orchestra lay down the string licks on a disco album. You've Stolen My Heart is a set of goofy, kitschy Bollywood musical soundtracks played by the best damn backup band in the world. Like a Thomas Kinkade painting of a thatched-roof hut, Kronos graces the recording with about six chords, a few scales, and scribbles their name on top.

You've Stolen My Heart is not a String Quartet's desire to branch out and explore the music of other cultures. Kronos is a bunch of sell-outs to tapas-eating suburbanites. Even the first track, translated as "Take Another Toke" is a desperate attempt to expand their market base. Just because it's sung in Hindi doesn't make it cool.

It's annoying that Kronos has gone from offbeat, cutting-edge projects - like recording Lutoslawski String Quartets, the music of modern Chinese composers, and daring to perform monoliths of the Twentieth Century like Crumb's Black Angels - to just plain stupid. I thought they were doing well at challenging fans of traditional western music, and enlisting new audiences. This project goes too far.

Google talk really works

Google talk is really amazing...

Another to add to the list.

Maureen Dowd's perfectly worded Op-Ed in the New York Times uses the recent disaster in Louisiana (and the even more disastrous White House fumbling) as a means to expose Bush's staggering incompetence, arrogance, stupidity, and racist condescension. Although the entire piece is great, this passage really sums it up:

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

This is not a question of partisan politics; Americans are homeless and starving because Bush doesn't give a crap about poor people (although he's waxed nostalgic about the destroyed saloons of New Orleans, as he's pointed out in a recent interview); because human lives are being lost because our senseless war in Iraq is sucking our treasury dry and wasting the lives of the good men and women who volunteer to defend our country. This is the man we've elected to represent our nation - someone who has both the intellect and the blind loyalty of a partisan golden retriever.


»Article (NY Times)

Black people loot, white people find.

Compare the two photographs and descriptions below. Although the racism may not have been intentional, the two captions say a lot about how the media views this crisis.