Keepin' It Real

I read today that Beatallica were served with papers by Sony to take down their web page. For anyone who’s not familiar with them, they are a parody band from Milwaukee that mixes Metallica and Beatles songs together and quite well, if I may add. Titles of songs include “The Thing That Should Not Let It Be” and “Enter Taxman”. Before their site was taken down, mp3s of their music were to be found and could be downloaded for free. Sony had a cease-and-desist order sent to the band’s ISP claiming copyright infringement. They’ve also demanded “an accounting of all sums received or earned in connection with the material.” Um…they gave it away for free, dumbasses. Lars Ulrich of Metallica is supportive of the band as Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater has also come down on the band’s side. (Beatallica opened for Dream Theater on their tour last year. I’m downloading a copy of this show as I type.) Come on! It’s parody, folks! Sony isn’t going to lose any money. No Beatles fans are going to suddenly lose interest because of a band most have never even heard of. Fucking major labels…

Honestly, the Academy Awards™ didn’t really interest me but I am happy to read that Bob Richardson won for Achievement in Cinematography as he shot The Aviator. Richardson was Oliver Stone’s DP for years and is, in my humble opinion, one of the best working today. You hipsters saw his work in the Kill Bill flicks which I didn’t really care for. I saw them only because Bob shot them. I haven’t yet seen The Aviator so I must get my ass to the theater and check out the photography.

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been listening to the audio drama, Clayborne. They’ve finally started posting episodes beyond the first 8 that I grabbed from mp3.com a few years ago. The mystery is pretty well established and now they’ve gotten around to developing the characters more.

Has anyone else gotten into podcasting? I’ve subscribed to a few channels so far. While I’m not remarkably impressed with most of them, I do like the concept. I don’t have a portable mp3 player so I just listen to the shows on my PC. I subscribed to 3 geeky tech shows, 1 about s-e-x, and a BBC show about history. One of the tech shows apparently hasn’t podcasted in a while as iPodder hasn’t downloaded anything. The mp3 of another of the tech shows was cut off after only a minute or so. The final one was horrible as it was just this chickie wandering around an industry show. Maybe if she had the personality of, say Triumph, then it would have been amusing. As it was, however, I was just bored because she just doesn’t have the personality to make an audio account of wandering the aisles at a convention center interesting for nearly half an hour. The sex hoolie was also rather boring. A man and a womyn review the new flick, Inside Deep Throat. Again, they just didn’t have any chemistry. We’ll see how the next episode goes. The BBC show is about alchemy. Not surprisingly, what I’ve heard so far is pretty cool. Gotta love the Beeb.

Work today has been pretty boring. The highlight was having lunch with Dogger down at the Argus. On returning, Scott had me proofread this project overview hoolie that he’s been working on. And now I’m listening to this CD I burned last week. It’s about half-filled with Genesis but it also has “Scissor Man” by XTC on it and the song won’t get out of my head. My plan right now is to crank up “Duchess” in my headphones and see if that’ll chase it away. It’s one of my favorite Genesis songs and I really like this new mix. “Duchess” has 2 elements which were for the most part absent towards the end of Phil Collins’ tenure with the band: 1) harmony vocals and 2) lead drums.

Unlike Yes, which throughout its career has had at least 3 members contributing vocals, Genesis has had only 1 singer for most of its career. Collins added vocals while Peter Gabriel was with the band. After Pete left, they multi-tracked Phil’s voice. But after Duke in 1980, the songs had precious little harmonizing. I think that if you put aside any preconceptions about Collins’ voice gained via “Sussudio”, “Invisible Touch”, and the like, one would see that he’s got a really good voice.

The drums on “Duchess” really aren’t that fancy but are the lead instrument. Bass pedals, guitar, and piano hover in the background so the snare/hi-hat combo really propels the song. The rhythm is to the fore but not quite like, say, a rap song. It’s like a slow surf beat but with oodles of open hi-hat.

Alright – I’m going home.