Read:My:Back

Half-Cocked Site Redesign

So there I was, playing with the new banner image I'd thrown together, shuffling through different color schemes, margin widths, and rudimentary CSS hooey. I wasn't particularly satisfied with anything I'd come up with, but at least I was experimenting in a way that would perhaps get me to finally move R:M:B off that light-text-on-a-black-background motif.

Then I got distracted for a second and hit "save" instead of "preview"—in a single keystroke committing my e-foolery to published status.

Then, there was cursing. Lots of cursing.

It was late, I was tired, and I couldn't bring myself to re-create the old design since I have a rule about never referring to HEX color charts after 10 PM. So there it sat, and here it continues to sit, at least until I get back from what is sure to be a humiliating experience at the dentist's office this morning. Keep in mind, I am woefully colorblind, and therefore worry a great deal about foisting color combos upon the world that are potential puking hazards. Or just really ugly. But considered through the corrupted vision afforded by my own two eyes, I think I'm rather fond of the yellow banner image against the purple backdrop. I'm somewhat indifferent on the background/text interplay in the main content column, but I know I want a light background with dark text, and going full white/black seemed a little too harsh, if not a bit pedestrian.

The right nav column is crap. Gotta do something about that later. Thoughts? Advice? Feel free to email me.

On the upside, I'm proud to have finally installed a working search box! 

Edith Frost, Thee Oh Sees

And a pair of first-rate songs about cars.

Edith Frost - "Cars and Parties" [MP3 | Info]

Thee Oh Sees - "Kids in Cars" [MP3 | Info]

These tracks are licensed for free and legal distribution via Creative Commons and the Free Music Archive. The FMA "is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet."

So I guess you'd agree that it's finally time to buy that external hard drive you've been eyeballing at J&R, eh?

On Resuming Broadcast Activities at WFMU

I'm floored to announce that I'll be firing the opening volley of WFMU's summer programming schedule, which goes into effect on June 22nd. Forthwith, my show will air every Monday morning at the ungodly time of 6-9 AM and will comprise three hours of freeform music and chatter which will be heard only on the web—not over the FM band. (At that hour, JM in the AM broadcasts on the station's 91.1 frequency.) Various life changes and my unpredictable schedule made it impossible for me to commit to any other timeslots, so rather than continue my self-imposed hiatus from WFMU, I'm opting to put my faith in the station's enormous web listenership. (Kim from Louisville and Pete in L.A., I'm lookin' at you!)

Although the difference for most web and archive listeners will be utterly transparent, a few critical points should be made. First of all, I'll be getting up at the asscrack of dawn on Monday mornings this summer, so I regret having to decline any Sunday dinner invitations up through mid-October. Secondly, as the FCC does NOT have the power to foist their priggish standards upon the internet, I'll be freed from the crippling fear that a song with fleeting expletives could rack up huge fines for the cash-strapped station. That doesn't mean I'm planning to air the entire Frogs discography, or open each week's show with "Saturday Night at the Bookstore" by the Dicks (still one of the filthiest songs I know), but I'll definitely enjoy the freedom to relax as opposed to being on constant nanny patrol for words and themes that some people find saucy. In any case, I hope my enthusiasm for this summer program translates accordingly to the deskbound Europeans and bleary-eyed New Yorkers who make up much of the realtime listenership at that hour of the day. My podcast will go on hiatus after the July 1st edition, but content from the Monday morning freeform program will be archived on my FMU index page. I also plan to re-post the playlists with graphics, notes, and embedded player right here on R:M:B. I'm anxious to resume regular programming, especially in an environment of creative collaboration like WFMU, so here's to hoping you can tune in as you brew that pot of coffee, tackle your morning grooming rituals, or survey the day's grim economic news. As always, I am humbled by your support, and will try really hard not to play anything that'll get you fired.

Something Sinister Stirs in the Suburbs

Pictured: The battered husk of a telecom junction box that I came across somewhere in suburban New Jersey. Is this an example of poorly directed populist rage? A random act of artistic protest? Maybe it's just local cable technicians pulling a McNulty and getting wasted on the job. Whatever the logic, it's a good reminder of just how fragile the technology is that keeps entire suburban neighborhoods wired up to Bravo, Turner Classic Movies, and the Playboy Channel.

It's an idea worth pondering, as one of the most striking observations to be made when visiting the 'burbs is the apparent lack of people who spend time outdoors, even on nice days. It can be downright jarring to see someone out for a walk, or smoking a cigarette on their front stoop, or doing any of the other things I see people doing (and do myself) on a regular basis in New York. And then weirder still, when you do see someone on a suburban street who's lacking an apparent destination, they often seem suspicious and alien and make you wonder if maybe the police ought to be summoned.

Granted, this is a common remark made by arrogant city folk all the time, so I know I'm not blazing any new trails with this discussion. But I do believe the reasoning behind it goes deeper than mere lifestyle or cultural differences. In the suburbs, there is a designated place for every desired activity. (You drive to the park to walk your dog, or you drive to the gym to run on a treadmill.) City life is more hastily thrown together, and the structures and spaces are constantly being re-purposed to suit the changing needs of the population. (We live in apartments that used to be warehouses, and we eat in restaurants that were formerly banks or brothels.) All of this has convinced me there must be something that hinders suburbanites from using the ample space they've left between themselves and their neighbors. Yards, parks, baseball diamonds—They'll brag endlessly about the enviable amenities of their environment, yet they rarely seem to use them. So what is it? What's inside their homes that's got their rapt attention? Money? Drugs? Video games? Since the behavioral line of demarcation is so apparent when crossing from a city to a suburb, I think it's got to be something that city people either don't know about, or wouldn't care about in the first place. Something like the Playboy Channel.

I don't believe I've ever seen the Playboy Channel, even back when I was 12 and had friends whose fathers kept dirty magazines and unmarked VHS tapes stacked away in secluded cabinets. For all I know, the Playboy Channel may not even exist anymore, what with adult entertainment now being more commonly sought on the internet. But something about the mere idea of the Playboy Channel—that one can tune it in and possibly see something naughty—just seems more wholesome and suburban than the porn-packed internet, which I'd argue is used more deliberately by those seeking to quell their prurient urges. Even saying the words "The Playboy Channel" out loud just sounds silly and like a thing that only very mild people would find risqué—much like the magazine itself, I suppose.

Anyway, the next time you're driving through empty suburban streets and notice that the houses on most every block have only a faint blue glow emanating from behind the drawn curtains, I recommend giving this theory a moment of consideration. The vacant backyards, empty swimming pools, and abandoned basketball courts may be symptomatic of something even more peculiar than we ever imagined.

The photograph in this post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Snow Day!

Although as of this writing, it's changing over to the less historically celebrated "Ice Pellet Day", which will gradually slide into "I Should Probably Go Shovel Again Anyway Day", "Damnit, Now it's Just Cold and Crappy Out Day", "I Believe the Puddle I Stepped in Just Soaked Through to my Sock Day", and finally culminating with "Now I Have to Wade through Three Inches of Slush to go Grocery Shopping Day".

Hey, the joys in this life are fleeting. So any chance to wheel out my favorite mic-in track of all time is worth a hastily tossed off blog post, right?

For those who don't know, Stark Effect defines a mic-in track thusly:

a recording made on a PC using MusicMatch Jukebox, a music utility packaged with many new PC's that allows the user to record from the microphone input of the PC's sound card and save the recording in mp3 format. The default filename is "mic in track" followed by a number.

The real fun, however, starts when the following detail is revealed (Also from Stark Effect):

If that user also happens to be running a file-sharing program (WinMX, Audiognome, Kazaa, etc.), and shares the directory in which the mic in track is stored, then these personal recordings can be easily downloaded from the user's computer. The vast majority of them are either silent or uninteresting, but many are like Christmas presents giftwrapped in nondescript serial numbers. They represent unique examples of audio vérité.

Thanks as always to the Evolution Control Committee for first revealing the incidental art of mic-in tracks. Download a bunch and read more about them here.

Q: Are we not Ladies with Appliances? A: We are Men with Machines!

Even though there are two people under this roof, we are a one-computer household, and I've recently discovered that relegates us to total freak status among our peers. Before Alex and I were married, each of us struggled with hopelessly outdated computers (a fishbowl shaped iMac on my side of the river, an ancient PC with foot pedals and a broken floppy drive on hers). Fortunately for us, we tied the knot well before the economy tanked, and so were able to unload a few fistfuls of wedding lucre on the sort of things we decided married people ought to own. The three-year-old Mac laptop I'm typing this on was among the first of such purchases, and like any other shared expense, we discussed all the possible angles at length before filling out one of those new checks emblazoned with both of our names.

While deciding what kind of computer to buy, we talked about the abstract concepts related to such devices, as well as more pressing matters like how we'd go about gathering enough MP3s to make my fellow WFMU DJs blush. As cool looking as the shiny black Macbook may have been, we couldn't reconcile paying the extra money for it. Ditto for the oversized flatscreen edition. Ultimately, I like to compare our Mac's eventual purchase to that of a costly but laboriously-researched toaster that did everything we wanted it to. Just as my affinity for bagels need not preclude my wife's love of whole wheat toast, my desire for an iTunes alternative could certainly share space with her fondness for the Fug Girls.

Never once did it occur to us that we should each get our own computers, which I later found out is what every other couple our age seems to do. On several occasions over the last few years, married people with whom we are friendly reported on how they'd just come back from the Apple Store with "a pair of new laptops". It sounded to me like they'd been out shopping for ferrets or something, and I suddenly worried that Alex and I were either woefully behind the technology curve, or had left out some critical vow in our nuptials. "Who the hell gets two computers?", I wondered. Was one pink and the other blue? The idea of friends and their partners sitting together on distant sofas took on a peculiar accent when I further imagined them clacking away independently, lost in their respective e-dentities in spite of the physical closeness. I eventually dismissed these ideas after thinking long and hard on the matter and decided that the only way an extra computer would come in handy around here would be to have one in our kitchen. And a year or two from now, when a complete hardware upgrade is finally in order, I hope that's where this one's going to end up.

When I was a child, I was transfixed by TV game show segments in which an invariably blonde woman would present an array of gleaming appliances by running her hand across their luxurious curves and elegant chrome moldings. I routinely begged for (and was repeatedly denied) one of those kid-sized kitchen sets with the fake refrigerator and stove top. A few years later, my attentions wandered to the Holly Hobby-like cupcake ovens that were advertised on afternoon television. Unfortunately, with expected gender roles and societal norms now lurking around every corner, the threat of a gang-style beating on the playground of my elementary school was palpable, so I wisely kept my mouth shut. I made a brief pest of myself by hanging around the kitchen with my mother whenever she was cooking, but that usually ended with my being sequestered to the garage, where I took up with sexy distractions like tools, matches, and gasoline. (The concurrent availability of cigarettes and the rise in popularity of bands like Iron Maiden made this an easy transition, and it is one that I keep waiting for someone like Anthony Bourdain to validate on TV.) What I didn't realize at the time is that I hadn't dismissed my kitchen envy so much as I'd stuffed it into a part of my brain that many don't use until after turning thirty. The kitchen is often identified as the most important room in any household, and in acknowledging this truism, I've suffered the related agonies of ours lacking the counter space, proper lighting, and appropriate cabinets that I now desire. I sometimes think back to those game show segments and imagine all the pukey 70s extravagance morphing into a more enviably modern reality.

Then I think about my own kitchen, which is when the mental olympics really get going.

Don't get me wrong -- As long as you keep in mind that we're city people who live in a building that's over 100 years old, our current kitchen is bloody magnificent in comparison to some of the others I've reckoned with as an adult who enjoys cooking. However, that's not to say it wouldn't be vastly improved with more counter space, better lighting, more appropriate cabinets, and by way of bringing the discussion full circle, a dedicated computer terminal.

Mixing kitchens and computers is not a new cocktail by any stretch of the imagination. They've enjoyed a shared mythology for as long as science fiction movies have been made, if not longer. The most commonly touted features of any kind of robotic culinary assistant are a reduction in prep work, cooking time, or all around effort. If I didn't know better, I could almost imagine the phrase "with just the touch of a button" being first used in 1969 when the Honeywell Corporation introduced the H316 Pedestal Model Kitchen Computer (pictured above left). This vexing device looks like a cross between, well... two things that should never be crossed with one another except during times of great social and political unrest. Carrying a price tag of $10,000, the H316 was essentially a three ring recipe binder that weighed 100 pounds and which could only be programmed by an experienced technician. In spite of the futuristic looks (and built in cutting board!), this technological gateway to the kitchen of tomorrow was a commercial flop and according to Wikipedia, "there is no evidence that any Honeywell Kitchen Computers were ever sold."

In this case, what history tells us is that a particular device would not be the harbinger of a full-on culinary revolution. Blenders and microwaves are all well and good, but they're really just updated versions of the tools we've already been using for eons. A searchable network of content is what ultimately forces a giant leap forward, and access to it is what truly changed the way that I now address the dinnertime dilemma. (OK, unemployment also helped a lot.) It's a sentiment that I suspect rings true for many others who reached that critical point where they could no longer reconcile the despondent life of pastas, salads, and takeout that haunts so many zillions of my peers. No doubt, we're all better people for making the extra effort.

Clearly, cookbooks are an irreplaceable asset in our kitchen, and they will remain as such even if I someday get my wish for a digital culinary workstation with twenty godzillabytes of memory. But more and more often, I'm using blogs and websites to get cooking ideas, as well as for performing basic food research. ("What the hell is Chinese black vinegar? Does it matter what third world country my vanilla beans came from?") The cookbook shelf comes into play when I want an in-depth explanation of a particular culinary technique, though it's doubtless that I could head to the internet for that information as well. With the arrival of podcasting, streaming video, and user-generated content for every imaginable cooking conundrum, the PC's presence in the kitchen is no longer the gimmick that 20th century advertising executives first conjured. It's the logical next-step for an industry that tantalized housewives with spaceage gizmos bearing names like Whirl-o-Matic, and I am more than ready to embrace it. Offer it up with the counter space necessary for me to dismember an entire pig (I'm sure there's a tutorial on YouTube), and you may not hear from me until the promise of jetpacks and flying cars is finally realized. Until then, it'll be the blessed intersection where technology mingles with dirty dishes that fixes our attention on the days and meals to come.

Get inspired: Dow Jones & the Industrials perform "Ladies With Appliances". I challenge any and all to come up with a finer example of sautéed musical microchips. Originally from the Devo-damaged and wholly excellent Red Snerts compilation. [Buy it here]

Last Night a DJ Ripped Me Off

I've been searching high and low for a decent MP3 mixing tool that meets the following criteria:

1. Free, or cheap.
2. Easier to use than Traktor.

And you'd think that I was asking for the Holy Freakin' Grail, what with all the trouble I had in locating such a program. I initially thought I'd struck gold with FutureDecks Lite, but after a week of toying with it, a great many problems, design flaws, and simply retarded shortcomings were revealed, and I nearly gave up on the idea of ever finding a legal and simple program that would enable me to segue from one MP3 to another. (Hello? iTunes development team? Can I get an 'amen'?)

Then, paydirt. The Germans do it again!

From Native Instruments, the company that set the gold standard in DJ mixing software with Traktor, comes Beatport Sync. It's a free MP3 mixing tool for PC or Mac that enables live segues and basic beatmatching capabilities in a simple, easy to use interface. Since the gears that spin this modern miracle of digital delight are the same ones used to power Traktor, the program is both powerful and stable. I've never once had BpS crap out on me, though if you're about to deploy a multi-hour set of music, it's certainly wise to give your computer a fresh boot and not run any extraneous applications or update your Facebook page at the same time. Also, if you're a Mac user, it's recommended that you run BpS while plugged into a live socket (as opposed to doing so from the internal battery), and set your machine's energy preferences to "Better Performance".

If you use iTunes to play your MP3s, the great news is that Beatport Sync can interface directly with your music library without having to create duplicate files on your hard drive. (This was the major problem with FutureDecks Lite -- any partial collection of MP3s you wanted to use had to be copied to a unique folder, which anyone would agree is a foolish waste of memory.) Furthermore, the iTunes functionality means that you can access either your entire MP3 library through the BpS window, or create unique playlists in iTunes and deal with them exclusively. In other words, if you've been tapped to supply the tunes during your buddy's Tuesday night shift at the local hipster hangout, all you'll need to do is create an iTunes playlist of songs that'll keep the crowd drinkin', and then make sure that no one spills the party on your laptop.

Not long ago, I gave BpS a trial run in just such an environment, and it was an unmitigated success. Armed with an iTunes playlist of a mere 250 tracks (way more than I'd need for my four hour DJ shift), all I needed to do was plug my laptop into the club's soundsystem via the headphone jack, and cut loose with the party jams, uhh, as it were. When setting up, be sure to give your laptop lots of breathing room, as one of the first things I noticed about running Beatport on a two year old OSX Mac is that it fires up the internal cooling fan almost immediately. That's a sign that this is a powerful app that's deservedly drawing a lot of juice, but never at the expense of sputtering MP3s or inexplicable crashes.

A few other recommendations:

* Use an actual mouse (instead of the fingerpad), and slow down the tracking for the greatest control of the slider that segues between the two song wells. Remember, if you're participating in the party as much as supplying the sounds for it, your motor skills are going to be less than exemplary by the end of the 2nd hour, and that's no reason to subject the crowd to clunky transitions between Amon Tobin and the Hank IV. Remember, life is too short for crappy segues. Don't be part of the problem.

* Get acquainted with all the options in the pull-down Preferences window. I found the crispest transitions from one song to the next were to be had by setting the Auto Crossfade Time to 0.0 seconds, but this is surely rooted in my years as a broadcaster, where such segue control is pretty much mandatory. If you're approaching this from more of an electronic/hip-hop/beatmatching angle, you may want to set your prefs differently.

* Yes, you can scratch simply by clicking on the scrolling wavform in the active song well and dragging the mouse back and forth. Is this fun to do while you're first messing with the program? Yes. Will this earn you any accolades or appreciative glances in a live, party atmosphere? I think we both know the answer to that one.

* You can enable/disable any ID3 display columns by control-clicking on the "Artist" link just below Deck A. For the purposes of spinning mixed sounds in a bar or live show environment, I've found that less is more, since it's unlikely that you'll need to be accessing information like "record label", "producer", or "lyrics". (Who bothers filling in that stuff anyway?) I've chosen to display only the following links, from left to right: Play Count--->Artist--->Title--->Release--->Time. All of these are useful for toggling and re-ordering your tracks, especially Play Count, which will throw any tracks you've already spun to the bottom of your playlist and out of the way.

* Practice! A lot! I cut my teeth on MP3 mixing with Traktor, which is a far more complex app that piles all sorts of bells and whistles on top of the same basic functionality of Beatport Sync. But even after years of using Traktor both on and off the air, I have only a rudimentary grasp of its more advanced features, and that's come at the expense of many lost hours of sleep. However, because Beatport Sync is powered by the same engine as Traktor, (it really is "Traktor for Dummies") I picked it up pretty intuitively. That's not to say that you won't have similar luck, but if you have trouble, don't give up. The frequency with which you mess with these kinds of programs directly corresponds to the number of secrets that will be revealed. If you're really hardcore, you can also refer to the Beatport Sync forum, and solicit advice from the pros, but my guess is that a few hours in your apartment with the volume cranked (and your strobelight spinning) will have you burnin' down the dancefloor on the inside of a week.

Download Beatport Sync (for Mac or PC) here.

Concerning Brooklyn

Photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge are a ubiquitous presence on the Flickr pages of pretty much anyone who lives in or near New York City. They're right up there with blurry night shots of taxis whizzing down 59th Street which seem to somehow capture the edginess of having just spent too much money on a mediocre meal and poorly-mixed drink. To be quite clear, I issue these charges having snapped plenty of just those sorts of photographs since digital cameras and shutterbug cellphones hit the market, so don't assume there's any implied derision in my words. It's an inescapable symptom of being here -- no matter how accustomed we are to overcrowded streets, hostile vagrants, and inexplicably snotty bartenders, there remains a desire to portray our lives in a way that we perceive as being impressive to our less adventurous friends. Or perhaps we all just really like blurry photos of taxis and the Brooklyn Bridge.

I took this photo of the Bridge last weekend, after departing the Bang on a Can Marathon in lower Manhattan in order to seek out some dinner. It was such a beautiful night that my intended amble around the corner wound up being an hour-long expedition to Brooklyn by way of the footbridge that runs above its east and westbound lanes of vehicle traffic. The picture is actually of one of the steel girders that hangs over the Brooklyn-bound side, with the ghostly whiteness of Governor's Island serving as the background. The original version of the photo was fairly unremarkable, but some re-touching with the online graphics editor Picnik enabled me to whip up something I was considerably more pleased with. (Though still nothing to get worked into a lather over, assuming you're an even marginally talented photographer. That said, if you're Photoshop deficient, Picnik is a godsend in terms of its capabilities and ease of use, and I recommend it highly.)

This is Only a Test

I'm trying out a little compatibility experiment with the new Del.icio.us Playtagger MP3 streamer. Try clicking on the blue play button below. Can you hear the fanfare?

Marching Band Fanfare

And how quickly will this little development drive my bandwidth fees up the wazoo, I wonder...