December 12, 2008

[Niveous]

It's an unhappy day for me as my laptop is having serious issues. I came to work, did some typing on the train and everything was fine. Then I tried to turn it on again, 30 minutes later, when I got to work and it didn't want to start up Windows. Tried to reinstall windows and now the computer is being a bitch as it says its drivers are too large to install?? Time for another talk with Tech Support. India, here I come. Worst part is that I just did the Tech Support thing a few days ago when the battery had begun failing. Ugh.

Another depressing thing is hearing that KB Toys is going out of business. Sure, this is gonna mean some sweet holiday deals thanks to the liquidation but growing up, KB was a staple of my existence. I spent a lot of time buying stuff from there, especially when it came to my toy customization hobby. It's also the only store that I've ever gone to early on a Black Friday. I'm gonna miss that store.

QotD: Yesterday's question brought some interesting responses (and also got the damn theme from WKRP stuck in my head), so in the same vein-

If you were to host a show on "Songfight Radio", what would it be like?

What kind of songs would you play (give some examples)?

For me, I would wanna host a show that highlights the hard rock/ metal from the bands of Songfight. Some of the songs that would get played include "Foam Rubber" by Jute Gyte, "Polaris" by Klownhole, and "Let Me In" by Abominominous. And I'd also like to do some interviews. The list of people I'd wanna interview includes Chris Dienst, Jason Spainhower, Eddiebangs, Glenn Case, the Redmons....

[jimtyrrell]

According to the Governor, New Hampshire is experiencing the largest power outage in 30 years. I am unaffected by it so far, which is weird, 'cause this area seems to always get caught up in that sort of thing. Apparently the power is still on in Belmont too, 'cause my show tonight has not been cancelled.

QotD: My SFRadio show would be roughly 30 minutes, once a week. I'd play something I like from the current fight(s), a hidden gem or two from the archives, a track from 5 years ago this week, and then I'd spotlight a SFer with a short interview and a couple songs.

[Niveous]

According to the Governor, New Hampshire is experiencing the largest power outage in 30 years. I am unaffected by it so far, which is weird, 'cause this area seems to always get caught up in that sort of thing. Apparently the power is still on in Belmont too, 'cause my show tonight has not been cancelled.

You need to do a "Blackout" set with songs like "Dancing in the Dark" (Bruce Springsteen), "Blackout" (Muse) and "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" (The Arcade Fire).

[JonPorobil]

The Zoo told me they'd get back to me within 48 hours of the interview. They haven't yet. I guess HR works on Saturdays?

QotD: I'll tell you the show I'd most like to hear, even though I might not be the best qualified to host it. I'd want to hear a call-in technical help show, where listeners call in with their problems, the host(s) try to help, then other listeners call in with their advice. Kind of like a Dr. Laura type thing, but instead of broken relationships, it would help people struggling with their songs or their hardware. Pretty much not doable online, but I'm imagining big here.

If you put a gun to my head and told me that I had to be the host, then I'd probably choose to do a show about the current week's fight, with real-time reactions and phone-in reviews. I'd name my picks, and maybe take odds on the winner.

[fluffy]

qotd: I'd have to do a show about all the freaky wacky shit in the archive, because that is the stuff which originally attracted me to Song Fight to begin with. pricklypears, Swedish Masturbation Unit, Lightning Ear Fart, asmsmsmsptk, Down With Gender, etc.

[Ross]

I think I'd do a show called "They sound like what?" Where I take a band each wekk and play tracks of theirs back to back with tracks or bands people compare them to in reviews. I'd start with Melvin/Weezer and go from there to Frisbee/Mountain Goats, etc....As the ideas run out I could move to having guests talk about their influences and who they try to emulate or draw on when making certain tracks.

EDIT: Wait - we'd have to pay ascap to do that, huh. Damn.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Niv, I'd let you interview me any time. Wow, all good show ideas. I know I'd listen to them.

[Spud]

It would be kind of like this.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Spud, seeing that in type looks pretty organized. Why hasn't anything come to light? No one wants to put in the time? I know I don't, so I guess that answers my question. But such a cool idea.
Maybe if everyone did their own little segments and some awesome director spliced them together, it could work. What would Marcus do? WWMD

[Spud]

I recruited some help on the guest band front, and it fell through. Without naming names, I will tell you that it was from a very gung-ho SF participant at the time. I figured it was a sign of how hard it would be to get someone to do it week after week, so I tabled the idea for a while. As you can see, however, I did not delete the file

As you may have gathered, I am not hugely into open-ended collaborative, democratic efforts, so if it's a free for all, I have little interest. For me, it has to have the level of structure that we outlined in our proposal to work.

[Hoblit]

Another depressing thing is hearing that KB Toys is going out of business. Sure, this is gonna mean some sweet holiday deals thanks to the liquidation but growing up, KB was a staple of my existence. I spent a lot of time buying stuff from there, especially when it came to my toy customization hobby. It's also the only store that I've ever gone to early on a Black Friday. I'm gonna miss that store.

I saw that on the news this morning and its been a staple in my life too. I spent a lot of time stealing stuff from there. In fact, when I was moving last week I finally parted with my plush Babar I stole for this girl I liked back when I was 19. She ended up leaving it at my apartment one night. Yeah, I was a real jerk back then. (Gosh, I hope I'm not part of the reason they're going out of business!)

Glenn Case would make for a great interview.

[slats]

It would be kind of like this.

That was fun just to read the history of the site. I'd definitely listen to a show like the one described, despite the fact that I'm a couple years outside the target audience range.

[Spud]

So am I. Also, that was written several years ago. A few more of us have joined the King and crossed over to the other side of the 50 yard line.

[HeuristicsInc]

QotD: I'll tell you the show I'd most like to hear, even though I might not be the best qualified to host it. I'd want to hear a call-in technical help show, where listeners call in with their problems, the host(s) try to help, then other listeners call in with their advice. Kind of like a Dr. Laura type thing, but instead of broken relationships, it would help people struggling with their songs or their hardware. Pretty much not doable online, but I'm imagining big here.

Actually, it's not what they had in mind when making it, but that would be possible using NinJam... each of the listeners, I think, would need to install NJ though. But I'm pretty sure you can join as a listener, or send one stream from the NJ server to a repeater of some sort.
-bill

[Billy's Little Trip]

I was thinking about other ways this could work on a bigger scale. My old bass player emailed me a link to Ejamming Audio. We're thinking about trying this out for fun, being that our busy lives make it hard to jam as much as we like. Anyway, after reading this thread last night, I was thinking that something like Ejamming could make for an interesting radio program.

[fluffy]

So, something like 10 years ago there was this great app called ResRocket DRGN which would let you jam in semi-realtime with people over the Internet, and it worked great. 10 years later, Ejamming can't even do the basic things that ResRocket did right. Gah.

From what I can tell, everyone plays live against the same timebase, and there's pretty terrible latency even locally, which makes playing even against the metronome fall apart. On top of that, the UI is pretty crappy and I couldn't even figure out how to rerecord a track. I guess we're just not supposed to make mistakes or something?

[Billy's Little Trip]

So, ejamming isn't worth spending money on? You should design a perfect way to cyber jam in real time, Fluff. You have the brainz.
To be honest, I like just sending mp3s back and forth and building a cake. As long as the end finisher guy (we'll call him the engineer) cares enough to do a bad ass mix, then the final song will kick ass. To me, there's nothing better than a small group of musicians that know what's up to bounce production ideas back and forth until the song is gold....or at least in that groups realm.

[fluffy]

Yeah basically I like that approach too. Send tracks back and forth, have a single producer.