9 & 10 March 2013 (Days 68 & 69) – 21st Century Boy

I don’t expect that anyone would want to watch a television series about my life.  (Question to self: then why are you writing a daily blog? Self: I’m doing so anonymously. Second question to self: why would anyone want to read your blog? Self: I’ve told you/me many times, I’m doing this for my/your self.  Therapist looking unmistakably like Sigmund Freud: So Mister .Youth, how long have you been talking to yourself?)  But if one was made, the subtitle on screen would read – 2013: Otis embraces the internet. 

And so that has been the case.  So far this year, I’ve set up my first internet account at home, started and maintained this blog and engaged in all almost of the tasks one does when one joins the internet age.  Well actually, there have been two things I haven’t yet tried.  One is viewing porn and the other is purchasing music online.  And as of now, there is only one task left. 

I went into this weekend (actually long weekend as Monday is a public holiday) with no fixed plans other than to beat the unseasonably hot weather that has hit Melbourne as a final reminder of the summer we’re about to lose.  “M” and I hit a local shopping centre early on Saturday, did grocery shopping, had lunch, split up for individual shopping during which I managed to by nothing and went to the movies, all in air conditioned comfort.  (For the record the movie was Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, a more than competent whydidit.) By the time we returned home, all we wanted to do was vegetate which we did quite effectively.

Sunday posed a problem.  A long gap loomed before we were due at a birthday shindig at 4pm.  We shuffled around the house and did our chores.  With the house clean and air temperature still cool, “M” decided on a spot of online shopping (actually browsing is a more appropriate word).  When she finished I took over and idly tried to search for some cheap and legal downloads.

I was in luck, sort of. I was alerted to a site run by one of the record labels here and went scrolling through their inventory.  In doing so I found a couple of albums that I had wanted to replace my cassette versions for a long time but had never been released on CD.  I then wrestled with the less than clear instructions that these sites invariably have and eventually became the proud possessor of two digital albums.  Next task was to burn these to CD, place them in the rear pocket of an archival sleeve, hunt out the re-recorded cassettes, remove their covers, flatten them so that each cover and track list component is visible simultaneously and place them in the front pocket of the sleeve, ready for tomorrow’s listening.

The weekend’s listening was as follows:

(182) MUSE – The Resistance

This starts off as though it was going to be the MUSE album for the ages.  The first few tracks are great examples of MUSE’s patented symphonic space rock. United States Of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage) then follows, a track that can only be described as an out and out homage to Queen complete with Freddie Mercury vocal flamboyance. Later on comes the spectacular Unnatural Selection and Mk Ultra, each of them a bombastic (in the best sense of the term) showcase of the band at their best and obviously designed with huge stadiums in mind.  And then the last 4 tracks things provide an anti-climax of the most gigantic order.  Chief culprit is the Exogenesis: Symphony that accounts for the last three cuts and sounds like suspiciously like incidental soundtrack music.

(183) Radio Soulwax – Part Of The Weekend Never Dies (cd only)

This is gonna get confusing.  Once upon a time, brothers Stephen and David Dewaele formed a band in Belgium called Soulwax, an alternative rock band.  They then created a DJ alter ego for themselves as 2ManyDJ’s which released the Sgt Pepper’s of mash up albums, As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt 2.  They would frequently tour as one act or the other and occasionally (as when I saw them at a Big Day Out) as both.  On some tours they appeared as Soulwax Nite Sessions in which I think they play remixed versions of Soulwax tunes.  This relase is part of a DVD package which shows a Nite Sessions/2ManyDJ’s tour.  Naturally, it’s credited to Radio Soulwax.  The CD, which might be called Live At Fabric, seems to be a recording of the 2ManyDJ’s live.  If so, it demonstrates that as DJ’s the  Dewaeles know exactly how to keep a dance party moving.  The key is by baseing everything on a rock beat.

(184) Battles – Mirrored

Battles is a rock band which plays an intriguing form of mostly instrumental tracks.  There isn’t much of a reference point I can provide although some of the tracks on this, their debut, have a Frank Zappa feel to them.  Too loud to be considered ambient, too rhythmic to be considered as a truly experimental act, Battles are best described as a music category in their own right.   I suspect that this album might be the sound of a band finding its feet but I’ll need to listen to subsequent releases to get a stronger handle.

And now I’m off to surf for porn.

8 March 2013 (Day 67) – (Dance) Music For Working

For the most part, whatever is designated as “dance music” has always baffled me.  It doesn’t matter whether it was 70s disco or more recent forms such as house, trace, techno, etc, my basic problem has always been that I cannot find a way to dance to it.

I think we humans have an inbuilt, instinctive sense that allows us to discern rhythmic patterns.  It, almost more than anything, allows us to move accordingly, establishing key moments to do things (say, raising your arm John Travolta like to the heavens) that don’t occur at ridiculous times on the dance floor.   Thus, the key to dancing for me, whether voluntarily or not, has always been the beat. It provides me with the necessary aural directions; when to move my feet, arms, torso etc.  On the dance floor I get into the beat, recognise it, understand its patterns and plot out in my mind where my various body parts are going to go.

This is where my problems with “dance” music begin.  The beat is so persistent, so unyielding, so unrelenting, thump, thump, thump, boom, boom, boom, doof, doof, doof, that I experience a complete and utter sense of disorientation.  My brain shuts down, unable to detect anything in the beat that makes me want to sway in time to it.  I will then adopt a frustrated stance on the dance floor as I literally don’t know how to move.  Invariably I have to account for my presence there and instinctively adopt the headbangers stance and thrust my head up and down.  This is also a visible sign to hardened clubbers who immediately understand my predicament.  Or at least that’s what I’ve convinced myself.   Judging from people I’ve seen moving to “dance” music, I suspect that they’ve either ignored the beat altogether (making for some bizarre scenes on the dancefloor) or have taken such copious amounts of alcohol or drugs that they are dancing to a different beat completely. 

Unless “M”, to whom dancing comes naturally and gracefully, is dragging me onto a dancefloor, something far more fundamental needs to occur before I’ll even consider an expedition there.  Basically there has to be something about the music that moves me emotionally to want to dance and this obviously has to do with the quality of the music being played.  This is my other problem with a lot of “dance” music; it’s complete and utter anonymity.  For example, neighbours near my place, traditionally have a New Year’s Eve do each year, although mercifully we were spared one this year.  Their choice of music is “doof doof” my term (and probably many others) for exactly the type of anonymous relentless sound that I have in mind here.  It is largely instrumental, sounds like its being churned out of a computer and lacks any form of soul or emotion.  Above everything else it has a relentless pile driving beat that never seems to vary or even stop; most of the time I have trouble even distinguishing between songs.

I remember at one party a few years ago a period of audible silence after which Daft Punk’s wonderful One More Time was played before more silence and the “doof doof” seemingly restarting at the point it was before it was rudely interrupted.  The Daft Punk track was a blissful relief that neatly encapsulated the difference.  There are lyrics to the song and so a human (if electronically manipulated) voice but more importantly was able to convey a sense of joy and humanity that the “doof doof” could never hope to match.

As this anecdote reveals there is dance music that I actually like and which will make me move.  And it is not just onto the dancefloor.  Over the years I’ve found that the relentless beats, blips and beeps provide a wonderful backdrop when I’m faced with a task of a repetitious nature.  This was the case today, as I was faced with a far bit of data inputting, double checking and basic accounting.  In this environment I’m able to get my mental faculties to operate in an orderly, regimented manner and I’ve found that this form of music actually helps me deal with this scenario.  This is not heaping false praise on any of the artists or the recordings below.  Look at it this way, they are all records that make me move whether on the dancefloor or, in a completely unintended way, at work.

(177) The Crystal Method – Vegas

This is one of my favourite dance albums, a sensational rendering of what is probably a totally digital soundscape but invested with memorable tunes and enough vocal work to keep you thinking.  It starts off with their original take on Trip Like I Do, one of the more average tracks here but lifted into the stratosphere when reworked by Filter for the soundtrack of Spawn.  All of the up tempo numbers – Busy Child, Keep Hope Alive and its surging intertwining with Vapour Trail and Now Is The Time – are all sensational.  The remaining tracks provide some light and shade and reductions in the tempo.

(178) The Chemical Brothers – We Are The Night

Instead of choosing one of the better known albums such as Dig Your Own Hole or Surrender, I opted for this lower profile release.  It is quite a diverse albums encompassing the traditional Chemical Brothers attack on tracks like Do It Again, All Rights Reserved, a couple of tracks which betray quite a debt to Kraftwerk (Saturate and Das Spiegel) and even a track that could be termed a novelty number.  The latter is Salmon Dance with hilarious instructions courtesy of Fatlip.

(179) Mylo – Destroy Rock & Roll

Mylo is the stage name for a Scottish musician and record producer named Myles MacInnes.  This is effectively is only commercially released album which consists mostly of chilled out tunes built on a range of intriguing samples.  In My Arms is arguably the most recognisable of these being constructed from Kym Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes but the pick is very nearly the magisterial Need  You Tonite which uses, of all tunes, Judie Tzuke’s Stay With Me Til Dawn .  But absolutely everything is overshadowed by the title track which uses what sounds like an American preacher praying for the destruction of Rock & Roll, including such unlikely acts as Men At Work and Band Aid in addition to the usual suspects.  Listen also to how the preacher mispronounces some of the acts.

(180) Fatboy Slim – Better Living Through Chemistry

If only all instrumental dance albums could sound like this.  This was Norman Cook’s debut album as the Fatboy and I think he’s yet to beat it, You’ve Come A Long Way Baby and its host of singles and videos included.  Every track is based on a pounding beat but all have their own personality.  Song For Lindy, Going Out Of My Head (sampling a cover of The Who’s I Can’t Explain), and Punk To Funk are the highlights but really any track could have been selected.

(181) The Prodigy – The Fate Of The Land

This is almost critic proof given the existence of so many iconic tracks including Smack My Bitch Up, Breathe, Firestarter and Cimbatize.  The closing track Fuel My Fire samples The Cosmic Psychos Last Cause to great effect as well as providing Bill Walsh with what I hope are considerable well deserved royalties.

7 March 2013 (Day 66) – Some Movie Soundtracks

I knew it was going to be a busy day at work with quite a few time consuming meetings.  But I also wanted reassurance that my reimport of all my compilations had been successfully completed.  I thus concentrated on single disc comps and they all just happened to be movie soundtracks. 

As I see things, four basic types of movie soundtracks have been released on CD, not counting live recordings from concert films such as Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense or the Woodstock album.  These are albums containing incidental music written for the film, specifically written songs, compilations of previously released songs that appear in some form or other on the actual soundtrack or songs that with no direct connection to the movie but thrown together as an extra money-spinner.  In many instances a soundtrack album will contain combinations of the above.    The only real variation to this scheme was that developed by Trent Reznor for Natural Born Killers in which tracks are faded in and out of each other (the transition from Leonard Cohen’s Waiting For The Miracle into L7’s Shitlist is an absolute masterstroke) and dialogue from the actual movie.

It’s been remarkable how well some movie soundtracks function as stand-alone albums.  I can’t think of that many successful albums of incidental music by rock musicians apart from some of Ry Cooder’s (such as Paris, Texas), Peter Gabriel’s Passion (the soundtrack for The Last Temptation Of Christ) or Isaac Hayes Shaft.  (You could probably add many of the early Pink Floyd albums such as More or Obscured By Clouds here as well.) There’s been a greater strike rate for acts creating song soundtracks such as Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly, Prince’s Purple Rain and Parade, the Bee Gees component of Saturday Night Fever, The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and many others.

But it is the compilation soundtrack that has produced some notable artistic successes that have stood the test of time because the filmmakers were able to put together a fairly representative compilation of a particular scene or artist at the right point of time.  A lot of the concert documentary soundtracks such as Woodstock and Wattstax, The Concert For Bangladesh or The Band’s The Last Waltz fit here.  But the real successes are the Singles soundtrack which is a great overview of the Seattle gunge era, Saturday Night Fever for its depiction of disco, FM with its overview of 70s American MOR and at least two of the albums played today including my first selection:

(174) Various Artists – The Harder They Come

This is the album that introduced reggae music to generations of music lovers and along with Bob Marley’s Legend compilation, the reggae album most likely to be found in the large collections of people whowant to say they own reggae music.  Even if you never heard it, chances are that you’ve heard many of the individual tracks either in their original form or via cover versions.  The star of both the album and movie is Jimmy Cliff who contributes You Can Get It If You Really Want, Many Rivers To Cross, Sitting In Limbo and the title track, all now acknowledged classics.  Among the remainder there’s The Melodians The Rivers Of Babylon (subsequently butchered musically by Boney M), 007 (Shanty Town) by Desmond Dekker and the song covered by ska bands everywhere, Pressure Drop by The Maytals. 

(175) Various Artists – Dead Man Walking

I’ve always been ambient about Dead Man Walking the movie.  I know that it is about redemption and faith but is also supposed to be a coherent argument against capital punishment.  Yet when one gets to the actual execution and Sean Penn’s character finally admits his guilt and seeks forgiveness, I always think that I’ve seen the one powerful argument in its favour for the relief it gives the victim’s family.  I have no such problems with the powerful soundtrack.  The tone is set by Bruce Springsteen’s acoustic Dead Man Walkin’ and is carried through by similar superb efforts from Johnny Cash, Steve Earle, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lyle Lovett, Patti Smith and Michelle Shocked.  Light, shade and musical curve balls come courtesy of Suzanne Vega, Tom Waits and the duo of Eddie Vedder and Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn.

(176) Various Artists – O Brother, Where Art Thou

What The Harder They Come did for reggae, this album did for bluegrass music.  The soundtrack to the film by the Cohen Brothers it is notably for thrusting Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss to mass notice but also for highlighting some of the best bluegrass tunes.  These include Harry McClintock’s Big Rock Candy Mountain, You Are My Sunshine (performed here by Norman Blake), Man Of Constant Sorrow (a few versions here) and O Death (performed here by Ralph Stanley).  The current popularity of the Americana genre is simply unfathomable without it and marks another major success for the movie’s music director, the grossly under acknowledged, T-Bone Burnett.

6 March 2013 (Day 65) – American West Coast Punks

I headed out on another country work trip having already decided to listen to a couple of US West coast punk albums.  By this I mean the scene that solidified around San Francisco and Los Angeles in the late 70s and early 80s.  I seem to remember many critics at the time writing scathing reviews about some of the key albums from this scene but this view has altered over the intervening decades.  The original criticism seemed to regard the West coasters as Johnny come lately's who were trying to ape "true" punk a few years too late and for suspicious reasons.  The revisionist view seems to be that although this might have been true, the scene did develop its own identifiable sound which influenced legions of subsequent musicians including the grungers in Seattle.

The first is an absolute beauty:

(170) Dicks – Kill From The Heart + Hate The Police EP

Although the band was originally from Texas, I regard them as a West coast band for two simple reasons. First, they were based in San Francisco for most of their initial career, but of far more importance was the influence they exerted over the scene.  This is regarded as one of the seminal American hardcore albums of the early 80’s and it was reissued only last year by the Alternative Tentacles label run by Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys. Probably a tad more melodic than the Kennedys, they shared that band’s anti far right wing political stance as evidenced by tracks such as Anti-Klan (Parts 1 & 2), Bourgeois Fascist Pig and Right Wing/White Ring.  Yet the best tracks on this are those which departed for the formula such a scorching cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze and the 11 minute Dicks Can’t Swim, the closest thing to a funky jam that you’ll ever hear from a hardcore band. As an added attraction the Hate The Police EP is appended, notable for the title track which was subsequently covered by Mudhoney.

When this album ended, I intended to play a compilation album of similar material.  To my horror I realised that most of the tracks had not been re-imported.  Scrolling through my iPod (yes, I had pulled to the side of the road), I realised that most of the tracks from many of the compilation albums on it had likewise failed to import.  A replacement was required and so I went for an obvious choice:

(171) The Dead Kennedys – Live At The Deaf Club

There are a couple of live DK live albums out there but this one is the best.  It was recorded at the Deaf Club in Washington DC in 1979 before they had released their debut but they had already started to accumulate some of the tracks that were to define them.  There are strong versions here of Kill The Poor, California Uber Alles, Holidays In Cambodia and Police Truck but the undoubted high point is the three song encore of cover versions.  It is kicked off by their take on The Honeycombs 1964 hit Have I The Right before detonating a killer version of The Beatles’ Back In The USSR and Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas.

(172) Flipper – Generic

This is my favourite album from this era and scene.  Flipper, like The Dead Kennedys hailed from San Francisco and specialised in a grungy sound which I suspect was integral to the eventual development of grunge.  After a relatively inauspicious opening trio of tracks, most of the remaining tracks on the album find the band hitting a riff and repeatedly grinding it out to the point of exhaustion, often singing just a key phrase until it totally lost any semblance of meaning.  (I Saw You) Shine, Way Of The World and Life all follow this template but they’re all upstaged by the closer, Sex Bomb.  Not in any way associated with the Tom Jones hit, this is a grungy 8 minute blast set to a demented late/“difficult” period John Coltrane type saxophone against a lyric comprising mostly the repeated phrase “Sex Bomb Baby”.   

(173) The Germs – (MIA): The Complete Anthology

The Germs were spawned out of Los Angeles and were notable for their shambolic live reputation and the antics of their lead “vocalist” Darby Crash who committed suicide the day before John Lennon’s murder.  I’d bought this number of years ago having been assured in a number of books about how influential this band had been.  I couldn’t hear it after listening to this album then and I’m still not sure that I could hear it today.  The only thing that kept me listening was the guitar work of Unplugged era Nirvana and occasional Foo Fighter Pat Smear and even this barely got me over the line.  Sometimes I think that some bands are fondly remembered for the presence more than anything else and I suspect this is probably a classic case.

After dinner, I diagnosed the cause of my iPod problem.  Apparently in doing the re-import I failed to specify the Various Artist compilations.  As a result the only tracks that were imported were those by acts whose individual albums had done so.  I’d like to think of this as learning but I suspect that by the time I need to do it again, iTunes will have changed the procedure again.

5 March 2013 (Day 64) – Some Unique Musical Visions

I dragged myself out of bed at 6am and returned to the kitchen to continue the re importing process.  By the time I halt it again 90 minutes later I’ve got about 29,000 tracks on, enough to make a reasonable selection at work.  I needed that ammunition because, apart from one meeting, another long day behind my desk loomed large.  Wanting something different to kick start my day, I headed off into the world of one of music’s strangest visionaries:

(166) Sun Ra – Space Is The Place

Sun Ra was a jazz musician who fused it with all sorts of stuff.  Equally adept at fronting huge orchestras or small combos he recorded in excess of 100 albums but never really enjoyed what you could call mass success - after all we are talking about jazz here and Ra’s claim that his ancestral home was the planet Saturn wasn’t going to garner much support among record company executives.  The CD edition of this album is one of only a handful released on anything resembling a major [jazz] label and it’s easy to hear why.  The album commences with the incredible 21 minute title track, a hypnotic number in which later period John Coltrane like saxophones play over a multitude of voices repeatedly singing the title in different pitches and tempos.  On paper this sounds weird but it actually works.  The remaining tracks ran the gambit of conventional jazz (such as Images) to the flat out weird (Sea Of Souls and Rocket Number Nine).

(167) Funkadelic – Maggot Brain

As their name implies, Funkadelic were one of the true pioneers of funk music but this album was about as close to a rock album as they ever got.  Led by the genius of George Clinton, this album is notable for the title track which kicks off proceeding.  Introduced by a spoken word intro by Clinton himself (ordinarily I’d say “whacked out intro” but coming after Sun Ra it sounds positively conventional) the track is effectively a 10 minute guitar solo performed by Eddie Hazel.  The playing here is infused with such emotion that its instrumentation is frequently forgotten.  The rest of the album is pretty damn good too, notably Can You Get To That and the plea for black unity You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks.

(168) Yo La Tengo – Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo is one of the all-time great trios but is effectively a cult act known only by a fortunate few.  Unsurprisingly their main reference point is the ultimate cult act ,The Velvet Underground, but they also make a habit of producing extraordinary cover versions and instrumentals.  This album is a two disc rarities and B-sides album and unusually for such an album is packed full of highlights.  These include the frenzied guitar attack of Too Late; the indie pop of Cast A Shadow; Speeding Motorcycle in which they play live in a radio station studio whilst a fan sings the lyrics over the phone; a surf instrumental version of the Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop and One Self Fish Girl, another instrumental which uses motifs from Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.  But the highlight of this package is the 26 minute closer Sunsquashed, an instrumental that appears to draw inspiration from the VU’s famed extended live workouts of Some Kinda Love.

(169) Frank Zappa – Our Man In Nirvana

Zappa is a natural fit here.  This is one of a series of bootleg records that he re-released under a program he termed “Beat The Boots”. This documents a performance just prior to the release of the Uncle Meat album and so it provides an opportunity to hear a his greatest guitar epic King Kong before his audience became too familiar with it.  This version runs to at least 30 minutes with no end in sight when the bootlegger's tape ran out; there are also cuts at different points in the album.  Also of note is the combination of A Pound For A Pound On A Bus and Sleeping On A Bus which goes for 25 minutes.  Amazingly, better versions of these tracks are available in the Zappa catalogue but not necessarily in the same album which made this an automatic iPod inclusion. 

After dinner I completed the reimporting process and not a moment too soon as I have a country drive tomorrow.

4 March 2013 (Day 63) – Recent Purchase Update

Having calmed down overnight, I consoled myself with the thought that at least I had a brace of new albums to play on the boom box at work today. 

(161) Gary Clark Jr. – Blak And Blu

Clark has received an incredible amount of positive press since this especially since this album, his major label debut, was released late last year.  So, does this live up to the hype? Yes and no.  Whilst an extremely proficient guitarist, I think Clark stylistically is really not all that dissimilar to Australia’s own Jeff Lang.  The only real difference to these ears is that, unlike Lang, Clark has the benefit of being an American (and therefore being somehow viewed as authentic – think of the fuss made over Seasick Steve a couple of years back) and having a major label behind him.  The album is fine enough – Third Stone From The Sun/If You Love Me Like You Say is a spectacular calling card and probably a concert highlight - but it can do with some “dirtying up”.  To me the album sounds too clean especially for someone with such a fuzzy guitar sound.  Still its early days and this will do for now.

(162) Band Of Horses – Mirage Rock

Now that’s almost more like it.  I was given a copy of their previous album Infinite Arms and must admit to being slightly underwhelmed.  This is a good step in the right direction with the addition of some loose sounding rockier numbers such as Knock Knock and Feud to complement the ballads (Slow Cruel Hands Of Time is superb) and general Americana.  I suspect that the next album will be the one that turns them into a major musical force or an Eagles for the 21^st Century.

(163) Foals – Holy Fire

My goodness, what happened here?  Their previous album Total Life Forever was one of the more promising albums from an English act in quite a while.  However, large slabs of this sound like off cuts from a below par Aztec Camera album.   A clear 80’s vibe permeates most of the record and only Providence hints at the impressive results that will surely emerge should the band trust their own instincts.

(164) Gallows – Self Titled

Gallows are an English hardcore punk band who mixes Naplam Death with a bit more melody and a greater political awareness.  Tracks such as Victim Culture, Odessa and the catchy Everybody Loves You (When You’re Dead) are as good as any act ploughing this particular field at the moment.  Plus, like all good punk acts, they’ve got the good sense to kept things down to a short running time.  Given a natural level of musical growth they could be an act that might mature spectacularly.

(165) Radiohead – Pablo Honey (bonus disc)

I managed to snaffle a Japanese pressing of the reissued 2 disc plus DVD edition of Radiohead’s debut from a cheap import shop in the city.  The second disc brings together early EPs incorporating mostly demos and live material, some outakes and a live BBC session.   Some of the material is worth hearing at least once especially a demo of Prove Yourself, a spectacular remix of Blow Out, a live Ripcord and an outtake called Coke Babies.  This latter track sounds very much like Creep Part 2 which probably explains why it wasn't released until now.  Although its easy to hear from the whole package how the R.E.M. comparisons emerged to dog them in this era, what struck me was the existence of tracks such as US version of Stop Whispering that sound more in tune with early period U2.  This is a feeling the live BBC Session of 22 June 1992 does nothing to dispel especially on Nothing Touches Me.

After dinner I started on the task of reimporting 37,000 tracks onto my iPod. A partial re-education process was necessary owing to a change in the iPod software since the last time I had to do this.  Initially tracks imported easily enough and then started to slow down.  At midnight I halted the import with the job about 60 per cent done.

2 and 3 March 2013 (Days 61 & 62) – The Weekend From Hell

I’ve just experienced a horrific weekend full of music related disasters and no listening.   My scapegoat is the absolutely bizarre situation that exists in Australia with respect to the sale of digital music.

It all began on Friday night when I decided to take advantage of the Australian dollar to download digital versions of albums that are impossible to get here in any physical form.  It was then that I discovered that you cannot purchase digital music from overseas iTunes or Amazon sites.  It seems that the reason is to protect local providers.

If this is truly the case, it is one of the more idiotic rationalisations I’ve ever heard.  iTunes prices in Australia appear to be about 50% higher than overseas.  This is for DIGITIAL music.  Just where are the overheads to justify the mark up?  It can’t be due to transport costs, warehousing costs or a rise in shop leases and I’m pretty sure iTunes isn’t one of the companies that attract the carbon levy.  As for Amazon, what is there to protect?  Amazon.aus is yet to be launched here and so denying Australians access to its downloads appears indefensible. As if to compensate for this, Amazon.UK did provide free delivery of books, CDs and DVDs to Australia for almost a full year but has since stopped this practice. (I suspect that if Amazon has a motive in denying downloading from overseas to Australia it is because they are planning to sell their downloads at the higher iTunes rate when Amazon.aus is eventually launched.)  No wonder the Government has launched an investigation into the sale of digital media in this country.  Even then I’d doubt that anything could be achieved.  After all, a free trade agreement is in force between Australia and the U.S and that doesn’t seem to have led to an appreciable difference here.

I’ve read somewhere recently that overseas companies deliberately charge Australians a premium charge in the supply of a great many goods with the justification being a belief that Australians are prepared to pay higher prices.  I do not know whether that is the reason with iTunes but I suspect the reason other industries get away with it is probably due to the way bricks and mortar retailers have not embraced the internet as a means to sell goods.  Last year’s push by some retailers to add a 10% tax to goods bought over the net was laughed at by the majority of Australian consumers and with good reason.  As so many letter writers pointed out, even with the 10% tax added, the goods would still be cheaper than those purchased in a store. Some of the stores involved in this campaign did relent and established internet sites but their sense of innovation over the net has been to do nothing more than provide a means for consumers to buy their stock for the same price as in their stores.

And this I suspect is the problem.  Overseas businesses know that established Australian businesses are largely unwilling to go the whole hog in using the internet.  As a result they can either set their prices in a manner that provides Australian consumers with the knowledge they’re obtaining goods at a cheaper rate that the bricks and mortar retailers that is sufficient to change their purchase patterns and nothing more.  Matters aren’t helped by the way Australian music retailers have approached the issue.  From what I can see for example, JB HiFi doesn’t even sell mp3s, preferring to flog its streaming service.  For a business that was initially sustained by customers who wanted to buy music in a physical form, this is a particuarly odd stance.

All of this provides a context, rationale, call-it-what-you-will for someone to actually want to download digital music for free.  I decided that, not only did I not have had a problem in doing this, I had practically been forced into it.   My justification was as follows: all I’m seeking to do is to replace vinyls and pre-recorded cassettes with a digital version I could burn to CD as the CD versions either do not exist or are not sold in this country.  Therefore a free download is justifiable given I’ve already purchased the music in question, was only seeking to update it into another format and did not have the means to do so at a reasonable price, if at all,  in this country.

This led to my second disaster as a result of downloading one such program.  Big mistake.  After doing this, I found that the service didn’t even come close to finding any of the albums that I wanted to download and so decided to delete it.  Finding the uninstall program was difficult enough and a few hours later had succeeded in deleted only part of it.  Unfortunately, the program had hijacked my browser and I needed to find a solution to that.  After a couple more fruitless hours on the net, it suddenly dawned on me that I had a software protection package.  Feeling completely idiotic, I ran it and my problem was solved.  Exit stage right free digital downloads.

Sunday did not begin well as I absorbed news about the previous night’s Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds gig at the Myer Music Bowl.  In view of the major shows I’ll be attending later this month, I decided to give this a miss.  After all I’ve seen every Cave tour bar one over the last 15 years or so plus Grinderman. Surely I could afford to miss this gig?  Then I discovered that the support act was Mark Lanegan and that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra was also involved.  Did I miss news of these contributors or were these well-kept State secrets?  I decide not to answer this question all that self critically and go on to enjoy my Sunday, even making a few purchases.

Come Sunday night, I decide to add my purchases onto my iPod so I can listen to them on Monday.  Now I don’t know what exactly happened next but in a matter of minutes I had wiped all of the 34,000 songs off it!  I know that reimporting will be a time consuming hell.

Hence, this rant.