All posts by Raymond Tomlin

About Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

Listen. Learn. AudioBloggers Post Their Favourite Music Online
Obscure, and Great, Sounds Become Accessible To The Masses

Music

THE-AUDIO-BLOGGING-PHENOMENON

There’s a great deal that is salutary about the blogging phenomenon, not the least of which is the opportunity that is afforded bloggers to bring our own perspective to the news of the day.
Over the past couple of years, Flickr has made it possible to upload your entire photo collection to the Net, MSN Spaces (among other platforms) has made it relatively easy to create your own blog, video blogging is yet another recently-developed form of blogging expression (just check out a few of these video blogs), while podcasting (a portmanteau that combines the words broadcasting and iPod) makes available everything from conventional news shows to self-published radio shows, downloadable as mp3 files and playable on your mp3 player.
Perhaps the most salutary blogging development, though (at least for those of us who love music, and are always on the look out for intriguing new sounds) is the audio blogging phenomenon — where a new breed of tastemakers devote their spare time to disseminating, free of charge, music that’s obscure, unusual, cutting-edge, or on the verge of being forgotten.
Siddhartha Mitter, a Boston Globe correspondent, provides an introduction to the “the best music you’ve never heard” phenomenon.

The principle behind an audioblog — also called MP3 blog — is simple. You find a track you want to share with the masses. You place it online as an MP3 file, which anyone with a fast connection can play or save. And you write a little commentary, which might be pithy or detailed, straightforward or oblique. Think of each post as a whimsical capsule review, with sound attached.


In the course of his Globe piece, Mitter turns readers onto a number of audio blogging sites — including Paul Irish’s Aurgasm; San Francisco music journalist and scholar Oliver Wang’s Soul Sides; London-raised, Boston-based blogger Lee Caulfield’s The Number One Songs in Heaven, which specializes in near-forgotten soul tracks; and Christopher Porter’s appropriately named audio blog, the suburbs are killing us.
Treat yourself today: download some new music from the Internet.

“F**k You Very Much, FCC”: Eric Idle

Radio

ERIC-IDLE-FCC-SONG

Despairing for the state of radio, and a fan of Monty Python?
VanRamblings has just discovered this delightful little song by ex-Rutle, Eric Idle, the most musical of the Monty Python crew.
Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), VanRamblings is just thrilled that Eric has a message for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (the U.S. equivalent of the CRTC), as well as Bush and Cheney.

“Here’s a little number I wrote while out duck hunting with a judge,” Idle announces, then croons in soft-shoe English music-hall mode: “Fuck you very much the FCC / Fuck you very much for fining me.”


After razzing U.S. corporate radio giant, Clear Channel, Idle flips off Condoleezza Rice the ‘intellectual tart’ and ‘Dickhead Mr. Cheney,’ rhymes ‘Bush’ with ‘tush’, and thanks all concerned for locking up ‘uppity rich bitch’ Martha Stewart instead of Enron and saving ‘the great white male’.
By VanRamblings’ calculations it would cost a radio station a mere $70,000.00 each time the song was played.
For background on the genesis of the song go to Wikipedia, which also provides the song lyrics.