Stranger Than Paradise

Welcome Natalie Mei Hebert!



Physical State: creaky
Mental State: muddy
Music: Four Tet - Rounds
Fashion sense: black shirt, blue jeans

Welcome to Natalie and congrats to my friends and tired parents Vivian Tsui and Chris Hebert. She is such a little cutie and will bring joy to many people's lives I can guarantee. Its not often I get a chance to put baby pictures up on my blog so this is a rare treat. Whoo hoo!

Get Another Hobby
& Goodbye Teresa


Teresa gone but
not forgotten

Physical State: glidey
Mental State: loose
Music: Hobby Industries - September Soundbank
Fashion sense: white shirt, blue jeans

The masterful Thomas Knak at Hobby Industries (the hottest little Danish label of the moment) has added one of his best soundbanks yet this month. The DJ Hype track at the beginning gets you going right away. Broadcast and the Tied and Tickled Trio also appear this month and even, wait for it...Beyonce (?!?). Hmm.

On another note I'd like to say that Teresa Strasser (seen above), you will be missed on my favourite guilty pleasure on TLC, While You Were Out. 26 million viewers can't be wrong. Come on admit it, you love this show too. Don't be shy. Have no fear though, Teresa can still be found on E! News Daily for those of you looking for a little more Teresa (not in Canada though!)

New Radio Show from Broadcast



Physical State: hunchy
Mental State: slow
Music: Broadcast - Radio Show #4
Fashion sense: green shirt, blue jeans

Once again the retrofuturists from Birmingham have come to your cultural rescue. Click above on the music link to connect to Broadcast's website and click on the radio link there to hear yet another great radio show, Show #4. They are also touring so don't miss 'em (be sure to check out the tour link as well).

Goodbye to the Man in Black, thank you sir
(Johnny Cash 1932-2003)


American legend Johnny Cash

Physical State: achey
Mental State: sludgy
Music: Johnny Cash - American 3 - Solitary Man
Fashion sense: white shirt, tan shorts

'Man in Black' Johnny Cash dead at 71.

One post that I never thought I would put here for awhile was a farewell to Johnny Cash. He seemed to carry on despite all the hardships and health problems and was still making great music to the end with last year's American IV: The Man Comes Around. An American musical and songwriting legend, he never backed down and was to me one the of the greatest country singers ever. His vision was always uncompromising, original and true. The world had lost a great one today and that is a fact. He was and always will be the one true American Idol.

Read his obituary here. You can also read his biography and marvel at the incredible output of this man in his career by clicking here at Allmusic .

Congrats to Barcelona Pavilion on their
recent Peel Session


Maggie, Kat, Steve and Ben

Physical State: hunchy
Mental State: taffy
Music: John Peel - on BBC1
Fashion sense: blue shirt, grey sweats

Congrats to Toronto's The Barcelona Pavilion on their recent Peel Session (still able to hear it today, Thursday on BBC/Peel site above). You love to see local heroes make good and this is no exception. Way to go guys! A great band from Toronto.

The RIAA tries to convince customers to buy cds
by instigating lawsuits as a selling point

Physical State: lumbering
Mental State: paranoid
Music: Erase Errata - Other Animals
Fashion sense: whte shirt, blue jeans

The evil RIAA once again shows that they just don't get it. People are tired of paying out blood money for cds so what does the RIAA decide is a suitable option for their short-sighted business model? 261 illegal downloading lawsuits (with more to come). When did Big Brother (Business) crush American democracy? The RIAA looks greedy and incredibly foolish when they hail things like nailing a 12 year old girl and a 71 year old grandfather for illegal downloading. Click here for that article from today's Globe and Mail. What's scariest is that they can monitor people's activities on the internet. How did a corporation ever get the freedom to perform such an unconstitutional act? Isn't this an invasion of privacy issue? Ok maybe the Patriot act can prop that up after all you know that a 12 year old girl downloading Christina Aguillera is the same thing as having a bomb factory in your basement. Jeez. Somehow I think that this happening and the rallying of support by Jon Ashcroft for his Patriot Act are interesting yet incredibly sad to see. Seems like everyone's grasping for any kind of straw they can get their hands on. To me never in the history of the US has there been such a time of manufactured paranoia mixed with acts of unconstitutional corporate manipulation on government (Enron anyone?). The way to make a profit it seems lately is to crush everyone else or sue them off the planet. What a way to run a railroad. What a way to foster customer loyalty. Hey people its your damned business model that isn't working! Stop pretending you know what you're doing and change your business model (at least spend some of that bloodletting money on people who can show you alternative ways to make a profit. Your "alienate the customer" scheme will probably blow up in your face in the long run).

You as the music consumer aren't sure if its warranted to pay the price for a cd that they're asking so you want to hear some of the songs by the artist first to really make sure the cd is worth shelling out $25 for? (most times not even half this, frankly). Does anyone mention that the artist gets maybe a buck out of the total, if that? That means the record company and the retailer are getting RICH while the artist (the original creator of the work and the person bringing his vision to the world against all odds) can't make a living or even have decent medical insurance. I think that Universal has the right idea (which must piss off the RIAA I might add. It should be interesting to see how other labels react to Universal's idea). If all record labels made their products AFFORDABLE and within the range of the average music fan then they might see an increase in profits and a decrease in illegal downloading. Maybe, just maybe. Somehow they don't think that people paying for MP3s is enough so they refuse to get in the online retailing game. Face it music industry its the way that your product is going to be sold in the future. Stop brooding in the corner like a spoiled baby and get on with it. Why go after a 12 year old girl though for downloading when you have entire black market industries and Asian piracy rings dealing (SELLING) cds worth of illegal songs and DVDs. Isn't that a real terrorist threat to American business? This is some scary propaganda tactic on the RIAA and a invasion of freedom tactic that seemed to slip through Congress without them batting an eyelash? Scary times. When corporations can monitor your activities and sue you off the planet that's one giant leap for democracy I tell ya. For a sad chuckle I once again print this article written almost a year ago by Jack Kapica that appeared in the Globe and Mail around the time the RIAA was cracking down on internet radio stations with monied lobbyists convincing congress to enforce ridiculous royalty schemes. The RIAA is biting the hand that feeds them and drawing blood. There's no question about it. Long live independent music (they'll say next that no one can't sell music unless you're part of the RIAA). Long live America, home of the free and the cowardly...god love ya. Only 59,999,9739 more music fans to go.


How to fail in e-business with a record effort
JACK KAPICA

Thursday, October 10, 2002

It's easy to fail in e-business; what's hard is failing magnificently.The Big Five music recording companies have been transcendent in this respect.

Their combined efforts have gone beyond killing their e-businesses and are close to destroying an entire industry.

The following are 10 rules of e-business failure, a list inspired by the recording industry's imaginative approach:

1. Refuse to change: Computers are just tools, and useful only in making your existing marketing model more efficient. Give word processors to your secretaries and install computerized stock-tracking systems so you can lay off staff. Declare the future to have arrived. Collect your performance bonus.

2. Ignore the Internet: If you can't imagine any way of making money on-line, then no one else can, either. Act surprised when the Internet starts to carry multimedia. Cry, "Who knew?" and insist the whole multimedia thing was invented only to ruin your business.

3. Be sanctimonious: Claim to be more concerned about the artists than about your profit. You are selfless; your only interest is paying the musicians, without whom you would be nothing. Pray that nobody remembers the countless rockers who signed away their souls on recording contracts and were dumped the moment their sales slipped.

4. Misunderstand your market: When you count the songs being swapped on peer-to-peer networks, do not notice that most are mouldy oldies. It's still theft, you argue, even if you stopped paying royalties for those songs in 1961. Blame piracy, not taste, for your inability to sell new songs that no radio station will play.

5. Lie: Go on Kazaa, count the MP3 versions of songs you produced, old and new, and multiply that number by the current retail price of a CD; howl that you are losing a fortune. Forget that a Buddy Holly album sold for $2.95 in 1958; you sell records for much more now, and that's the price you use when calculating your losses -- it's more impressive.

6. Kill it: Hollywood failed to make VCRs illegal, but you're going to succeed with peer-to-peer technology. Spend millions on lawyers to sue Napster and Scour into oblivion. Sure, paying lawyers has suddenly become more important than paying your artists, but so what? Hedge your bets by setting up your own Web site, offering songs that aren't selling well in stores. When your e-business proves to be less than a thundering success, blame it on the pirates -- meaning all your customers.

7. Pray it will all go away: Your noble efforts to shut down Napster and Scour will so terrify pirates that they will decamp immediately and other industries will lose all interest in P2P. Act as though U.S. court rulings in your favour apply to all other countries, regardless of their different legal principles. Do not make contingency plans.

8. Insult your market: After calling your customers "pirates," antagonize them further by threatening to release a flood of "empty" MP3 files to frustrate swapping. Do not understand the technical reasons why this won't work. Threaten to hack into the P2P networks like real criminals. Forget that some of these networks are based in foreign countries, which (for reasons you also cannot understand) do not subscribe to your system of justice. Then say you will launch denial-of-service attacks on pimply-faced file swappers, even if they live in those other countries.

9. Make government your accomplice: Demand exemptions from criminal prosecution by the U.S. government for your hacking and denial-of-service attacks. You're doing this for a Higher Cause, after all, which is paying royalties to your artists (remember them?). Drag Verizon Communications, an Internet provider, into court and demand it surrender the name of one of its subscribers allegedly sharing 600 music files, so your expensive lawyers can crush this kid's skull. Then get the Canadian government to impose a levy on all recordable media sold here, whether it's used for burning pirated music or archiving corporate data. Make mortal enemies of Apple and Sony because the levy adds something like 20 per cent to the retail price of their portable jukeboxes, pricing them out of the market. Collect more than $30-million without disbursing a single cent to your artists -- after all, you're Fighting the Good Fight, and you're going to have to tighten the artists' belts for them if you hope to win.

10. Go back to giving it away: Organize British record companies for a Digital Download Day. Charge £5 ($12.50) and claim it's "free." Reason that people would rather pay for music than get it for nothing on Morpheus. The "free" fee entitles people to listen to 500 streamed songs, to download 50 songs or to get five songs that can be burned on a CD. Ignore the math, which shows your £1 price for every burnable song is higher than the retail price per song on a British CD. Pretend you haven't noticed that your "day" is actually a week (Oct. 3 to 9), further proof that you can't count. Act surprised when your music servers can't handle the traffic and grind to a halt; blame the technology that put you on this terrible road in the first place. Angrily dismiss anyone who says that what you're doing is something you once told a judge is sheer piracy.

Got it?

Now get out there and fail. Oblivion awaits.

Élodie Bouchez rocks



Physical State: creaky
Mental State: whirring
Music: Cat Power - You Are Free
Fashion sense: black shirt, blue jeans

Saw a great French/Icelandic film last night at the film festival, Stormy Weather, with Gallic beauty Élodie Bouchez (still from the film above). You might have seen her in Dreamlife of Angels or CQ. Set in Belgium and then in Iceland this film was quite beautiful and follows the relationship of a troubled woman and her psychiatrist and the bond they form as friends. Quite a nice film (similar in style to the Dardenne Brothers films in its almost documentary feel). Another entertaining film from Iceland was a new film by Dagur Kari called Noi Albinoi. He is also a member of the band Slowblow who do the excellent soundtrack for this film.

Hell sort of freezes over: Maybe Universal
is finally listening to the music fan

Physical State: lumbering
Mental State: puttering
Music: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell (on Interscope Records)
Fashion sense: black shirt, blue jeans (should be my nickname)

Say it ain't so. A major record label with a conscience? Apparently Universal Music Group is seemingly bucking the trend of being a ruthless bloodthirsty corporate overload by trying to win back customers by...wait for it...LOWERING THEIR PRICES. Yeah I guess you never thought I'd say major record label and lowering prices in the same sentence but hey there it is. This is a huge deal for those of us who are tired of shelling out 25 bones or more for a record that in the 80's on vinyl would have sold for $10! I hope in a way that the other labels see what Universal are doing and stop spending money on Britney tour buses and Spago lunches and get back to using their money wisely for making GREAT ALBUMS...imagine that. Affordable albums that are actually worth buying. Now there's a concept. Click here to read more about Universal's new vision for music sales.

No-Fi No Music

Physical State: achey
Mental State: taffy
Music: Komëit - Falling Into Place
Fashion sense: blue shirt, tan shorts

If you were ever interested to hear me ruin some of your favourite Cat Power, Leonard Cohen or Gainsbourg songs you can always click here for some cover versions by No-Fi in RealAudio format.

Computer seems to be messing up today, lovely.