Stephen’s Untold Stories

Outstanding song and video!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxHb5QVD7fo

Awesome arrangement of a great song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjbpwlqp5Qw

Thanks to Rick for this one.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Sometimes I forget how I much I like their music.

Thanks, Bruce!

That’s what this 13-year-old did. Very funny observations for those of us who grew up with the walkman.

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: “No-one uses them any more.” Another said: “Groovy.” Yet another one quipped: “That would be hard to lose.”

My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

Read the full review here.

The historic Georgia Theater in Athens was heavily damaged today by a fire.

Firefighters were called at about 7 a.m. to the theater, located at the corner of North Lumpkin and West Clayton streets, when a man walking home through downtown smelled something burning and found smoke billowing from the theater doors.

Within an hour, the roof on the historic building had collapsed.

Dozens of big-name acts had performed at the Georgia Theatre — musicians such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Prine and Jorma Kaukonen, not to mention Athens-based acts like R.E.M., Randall Bramblett and Davis Causey.

The theater originally became a music venue in 1978, when Sheffy McArthur built a stage in the building and opened the venue with Sam Smart and George Fontaine.

Link to article.

These students from New York City did a great version of “Landslide.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2p5augniQA

Simply amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BQBE4jkHsg

No animal theme this time. Just a cool song about a boy and his sister.

Lonely Boy – Andrew Gold

Very funny video from my Alma Mater, Berry College.

Testing something new.

You’ll need to click the orange “Play” link for it to work.

Here is another animal-related tune. This time it’s a horse.

Wildfire, by Michael Martin Murphy.

Lyrics | Michael Martin Murphey – Wildfire lyrics

Here’s a good start – Les Claypool.

A few months ago, my first iPod looked like it was dead. I bought it in 2004, and it served me well until recently. One day I tried to turn it on, but all I got was the sad iPod screen.

Now this indicates a hardware problem, and it often means the end of the line for your iPod. I Googled up a lot of suggestions for fixing it, but none of them worked. I put the iPod in one of my desk drawers and forgot about it.

Flash forward to yesterday. I was looking for something in my desk and saw the iPod there. I decided to take a chance and hook it up to the computer. I plugged it into the USB cable and nothing happened. I then decided to drop it on the floor.

On purpose.

So I did.

I dropped it from a height of about six feet. I then plugged it back into the USB cable and saw this screen.

After a few minutes, the iPod started synching with iTunes. Pretty cool, huh?

I realize it may not last, but at least it’s working for now.

I’ve decided to start a new feature. A different cool song from the 1970s every week.

This week’s song is a real tearjerker about the passing of Beach Boy Carl Wilson’s Irish Setter, Shannon.

Lyrics | Henry Gross – Shannon lyrics

Okay, I find this completely fascinating. Someone took MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and put it to music using an auto-tuner. It’s very similar to the recent work of Kanye West.

Mark Cuban hits one out of the park. (Can you tell I love baseball season?)

Every argument has its “go to” comparison.  Talk to anyone about what is going to happen with the future of TV,  and inevitably there will be a reference to “look what happened to the newspapers” or “Look what happened to the music industry”

Can we just set aside those arguments for all things media going forward and say that such arguments are INCREDIBLY STUPID  ?

Yes, they are INCREDIBLY STUPID.  In a digital era, it makes absolutely no sense to compare industries that were trying to protect and serve products that were and are PHYSICALLY DISTRIBUTED and by far the biggest source of their revenues vs industries that distribute their products completely digitally or for whom physical products are in the minority.

The music industry made the mistake of trying to destroy digital distribution in order to protect the physical distribution of CDs. Not only did they not have an answer to digitally distribute music in the Napster era, but they STILL DO NOT !.  Fortunately for them, they have finally recognized that for the most part the CD is dead, but where revenue is being generated by their music, they deserve their cut.  Imagine if they had established a digital distribution portal for audio and video, ala Hulu, that could at least attempt to compete with iTunes and YouTube. They would be in far better shape. Instead they are reinventing their business model. The CD was doomed to die, no matter what happened. Trying to protect it was a mistake.

The newspaper industry tried to protect the physical distribution of their papers. That was a mistake. Their problem was not only that they lost their ability to differentiate from content on the net, but they also lost their ability to differentiate their value to advertisers from the net.  There is no inherent advantage to reading the news or advertisements via the paper vs the internet, it has become a personal or business preference.  Unfortunately for the local newspaper industry, it doesn’t appear any of their publishers are creative enough to come up with options to attack digital.

Read the rest here.

An awesome performance by some Chinese musicians using their instruments to play some American bluegrass.