You know, it's funny. Back in the day Garth Brooks was the Anti-Christ to every right-thinking traditional country fan, forever ruining our twangy paradise with his riffs lifted straight from Journey and his Aerosmith covers.

But you listen to Garth Brooks now ... man, Garth Brooks is the reincarnation of Lefty Freakin' Frizzell compared to what tops the Country charts in 2011.

In any event this is one of the songs (the Double Live version, which I assume is recorded in Denver since that gets a stadium-wide holler when he says the word) I keep permanently on my iPhone and like to blast out walking through city streets every so often.

Nice johdpurs, cowboy.

I did the BBC's How Musical Are You? test which confirms what I (and everyone who has tried to teach me music from the Year 2 teacher who wouldn't let me join the choir onwards) knew anyway; I love it but really, really, really suck at it. PITCH SCMITCH!

"We may be tone deaf, but we have the music." I think Leonard Cohen said that.

So Rogue's Gallery - Hal Wilner's star-studded sea shanties thing - at the Sydney festival is getting bagged from all quarters (lots of unhappy commenters there) which I can't say surprises me. The whole event had "underwhelming" written all over it from the start.

I did mildly enjoy the Leonard Cohen tribute a few years back, a Wilner and friends love-in along the same lines, but the concept does lend itself to self-indulgence and complacency. I thought this event offered all the pitfalls of Came So Far for Beauty (acts not learning the songs, lack of rehearsal etc) but with the added variables of uncertainty about outside acoustics, the weather and ambient noise of one of the country's busiest commuter and tourist hubs. The Opera House forecourt should be left to Australian Idol finales and triathlon finishing lines.

Despite Marianne Faithfull being singled out for a shellacking I'm still very excited about her solo show, it's hard to judge whether I would've felt so hostile to her performance. i don't really mind divas getting drunk and slurring out of tune, really, in fact I quite like it. I'll be sure to let you know Wednesday night.

Thanks to @rubysquee for bringing this to my attention. A 70s Charlie Rich biography!!

I can't disagree a public library should quietly cull it from their 2009 collection but I'd hope they'd at least sell it for 50c so I could buy it .... And then frame every single page.

Here's some latter day Charlie, playing out his jazzbo streak which honestly fit more easily than the awkward pseudo Elvis rockabilly thing of the 60s. Pictures and Paintings is a great album you should consider adding to your collection, and if you already have: play it again tonight! Although my favourite song is really probably "Rolling With the Flow."

Pictures and Paintings

I try to avoid cute kid viral YouTubes -- watching. sharing or blogging -- but come one, I have to post this one.

So after the intial bafflement I got over the eMusic plan changes and was going to hang around, and make a conscious effort to channel the higher per track payments to labels/artists I wanted to support. But then a bigger problem came down the pipe: "in the near future" access to eMusic will be blocked entirely for users outside the USA. Canada, UK and EU. Entirely! Certain labels/albums are already unavailable on a country by country basis. This is a familiar message:

But this change would exclude us entirely.

And so eMusic joins Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, Napster, Lala, Spotify and countless other digital download and streaming services off-limits to us. Now, eMusic do say that exisiting customers will be "grandfathered in" (see FAQ) although of course that's what they said about my current subscription plan, which they just changed. And the grandfathering actually annoys me more, because it suggests the geographic restrictions are not enforceable law, but a voluntary policy decision in deference to their new BFFs at Sony, and future majors they hope to land. If you are doing something illegal and are a company, you don't say "oh well, "in the near future" we will stop doing illegal stuff but people already doing illegal stuff can keep on doing it."

I can go to Amazon.com right now and buy any CD I want and ship it here. But I cannot buy the same album in digital form from the Amazon MP3 Store. How does this make any sort of sense?

I have questions about it logged with customer service, i doubt I'll get a decent answer. Googling the issue of geographic distribution doesn't bring much helpful up.

So now I'm thinking I will just quit eMusic altogether because of it even though I would be grandfathered in, the whole thing leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. It is no different than DRM to me, right now. What was the point of being so visionary and courageous over DRM for so long, only to capitualte in 2009 with rubbish like this? Should've slapped DRM on the tracks back in '02 and you could've had Sony then.

I see that Sony Australia has its own digital download store, called with a rather hilarious lack of irony bandit.fm. There are some positives about it at first glance, I can actually use it on a Mac, no-DRM MP3s and 320kps (although I'm fine with lower bitrates.) The content appears to be more than Sony stuff, the Blue Note label is there and that's owned by EMI. The artist and genre pages are attractively presented and easy to navigate.

However. I put in the last 10 or so albums I dl'd from eMusic and they had none of them. They had a few of the artists, but not the same albums. I conclude they have no independent labels at all. If someone did an album for Chess it's there because the Chess catalogue is now owned by Universal, but later, say, Alligator recordings by same artist are absent. They are more expensive than iTunes on some albums, and iTunes has a much bigger selection. And for a couple of them I know for a fact I can go to JB Hi Fi today and buy the hard copy cheaper.

Is this where Sony is hoping to channel my money by excluding me from eMusic? Tell 'em they're dreaming.

I have never seen Blues Brothers.

Segue:

Here is my latest 8tracks, a semi-late Friday night and RIP Koko eight songs which clocks in at just over 30 minutes. There are a few mournful eMusic references tucked away in the lyrics too. ;-(

Hat tip to Phineas for tweeting this, and then going the extra mile to hassle me in real time about actually clicking on the link he tweeted.

Total Eclipse of the Heart, the Literal Video Version:

Also, Lonnie Johnson is really amazing and I never knew!! Boo @ me. You'll be wanting the Complete Folkways Recordings.

Jumping off what Lang Mack was saying in comments. I have never been one to feel too deeply about the "underappreciated" tag. I mean, for my favourite "underappreciated" artists no appreciation is enough. Also it might be intense selfishness, but I care about what I like and do not care so much about what other people do/not like. Folks like Dylan, Springsteen etc are common comparisons because they are such uber A-List.

Via the eMusic radio show, I heard the awesomely named Lucille Bogan's (aka Bessie Jackson) "Shave 'Em Dry" which somewhat stopped me whatever long weekend pottering I was doing at the time. Of course sexual references are everywhere in this pre-war stuff, no shock there but ... yoiks. Naturally it was not officially released and I couldn't google up corroboration for the claim in the comments at 17 Dots that its the first F word on record but its 1935 so it seems plausible. I was shocked, shocked I say. So shocked, I immediately downloaded the three alternate versions they have on eMu.

NSFW, NSF kiddies and NSF anyone who doesn't want to hear some vintage backroom jook joint 3am pr0n. Although it's very scratchy so you have to listen close, very close, to pick up the most scandalous parts. Maybe you have to listen to it very loud on repeat. *cough*

Shorter Bloke Who Prob Got His Ticket For Free: Eric Clapton should tailor his show much more to people who don't really like him much.

Props to my Twitter peep who suggests George just stick to Blueshammer.

More Konzert zum Amtsantritt von Obama. Bettye Lavette and Jon Bon Jovi. Fair Dinkum.

I had cause to look at Lucinda Williams' official site just now to check a discographical detail and noticed that the "coverflow" display features a photo I took and put here. I suppose I have right click saved a lot of Lost Highway photos over the years so I will magnanimously call it even. ;-)

Happy birthday for a couple days ago.

Leonard Cohen ticket buying expedition FAIL.

I think all my problems with the term "world music" -- I use it as a category left because it is annoyingly convenient, but note the scare quotes -- can be summed up with the fact Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu won "Best World Music Album" at the ARIA's last night.

But he's ...? Um, but it's ... ! So, why ... ? Er, what? (Archie Roach was also nominated.) He was also nom'd for Best Album so it was a safe sop to give him something else which everyone thinks he deserves for it, but O RLY WTF.

I'm also annoyed because I bought a ticket to see Gurrumul at the Opera House and thought it was late October, but I stumbled over the ticket on the weekend and it was ... last Friday. I then proceeded to an anguished Mendoza! moment. Fug.

The latest innertubes sensation! Started here, went a million places, Phineas sent it to me and now I give it to you:

"Jesus is My Friend" by Sonseed. Quite ... something.

The "Search for Sonseed" entries are worth a rainy Tuesday gander.

Paul Cashmere asks re: iTunes, "If it doesn`t work for Estelle or AC/DC or The Beatles or Kid Rock, then who is it working for?"

A: Um, consumers?

Let's ignore the questionable correlation=causation assumptions underlying the whole thing and the extrapolation way beyond the evidence (is it too obvious to point out that what applies to The Beatles applies to ... well, practically no one else?) Cashmere doesn't mention this section from the WSJ article: "This year, Kid Rock ... has had a massive radio hit with "All Summer Long." Ah yes, commercial, mainstream radio. Nothing at all corrupt or restrictive about that method of promoting music!

And AC/DC's new album which won't be on iTunes? Exclusive to WalMart in the USA. This is a paradigm-busting improvement, how? And who benefits?

Look, clearly there are issues with all the new methods of digital delivery and their impacts on artists and labels and whoever else are many and complex. And by nature I am an album buyer. But am I really supposed to feel sorry for the major labels because they've been outmaneuvered by another big company doing a better job at giving people what they want? Uh huh. The model is going to change again no doubt, but if it changes to what the labels are pushing, I really can't imagine it's people like me who will win.

Went to the Art Gallery of NSW today. The Biennale is on and one of the exhibitions is a phone which, according to the notice, Yoko Ono will call at random times. And you can talk to her. This is my niece Snow Pea workshopping such a scenario but it was silent while we were there. I did a Google but could find no reports of anyone actually speaking to her.

Erm, the only thing remotely Ono related in my collection is Dylan's potted bio of her from a Theme Time episode.

13 Yoko Ono.mp3

DailyLit is a concept that may send certain people in paroxysms of grief re: western civ. Serialised books via RSS (or email). I haven't really decided what I think of it, but I'll give it a go.

Isn't "The Millionaire's Inexperienced Love-Slave" the most wonderfully reedonkulous title? Even for something from the Harlequin stable? I was tempted to get it but it costs $4 and I am all about teh free. That is how I roll.

There is plenty of free, either the usual public domain classics or current works distributed under Creative Commons. I got The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James but at 200 plus installments ("War and Peace" is over 600!) I might break down and just buy the bloody thing before then. I also signed up for Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow and daily articles on US Presidents from Wikipedia.