This is a really great look into the agony Yorke seems to feel about the crisis of our global environment and the powerlessness that many of us feel. In particular he weighs in on what many consider the hypocrisy of the band being extremely environmentally conscious but then staging huge stadium rock shows which use tons of energy.

Personally, I can really identify with much of this:

When Yorke feels things, he really feels them. He’s vigorous and passionate, and far from the dour grump he’s often portrayed as. It’s just that he gets ultra-stressed by things that many of us choose to ignore, and melodrama can ensue.

I often feel the same way despairing over issues that I feel so sad, so strongly about. I can be so emotionally overwhelmed by the oppressive weight of these issues and feeling so alone as I watch my fellow man zip through life apathetically. Really I think apathy is the worst of the world’s evil right now – if more people cared about eachother and our world and our future, I’m certain things would be so much better.

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From www.pearljam.com:

Watch the first-ever Pearl Jam Storytellers July 1 at 10 PM Eastern/Pacific and 9 PM Central. Don’t miss this exclusive, intimate performance featuring new songs as well as past favorites. For a sneak preview check out vspot.vh1.com. Then, after the show airs, get on back to VSpot for footage you didn’t see on TV!

I can’t wait!

That said, this one was written as a overview for those who are new to podcasting. We’re getting tons of questions from our customers who have heard the buzzword but don’t know much else. Especially from churches who are very keen to offer audio versions of their weekly sermons; podcasting is a perfect delivery mechanism for that. Maybe this is a link you can pass to your clients to help them along.

Check it out, Podcasting 101.

Mr. Garrison: Chef, what did you do when white people stole your culture?

Chef: Oh. Well, we black people just always tried to stay out in front of them.

Mr. Slave:[straightens up] How did you do that?

Chef: Well, like with our slang. Black people always used to say, “I’m in the house” instead of “I’m here.” But then white people all started to say “in the house” so we switched it to “in the hizzouse.” Hizzouse became hizzizzouse, and then white folk started saying that, and we had to change it to hizzie, then “in the hizzle” which we had to change to “hizzle fo shizzle,” and now, because white people say “hizzle fo shizzle,” we have to say “flippity floppity floop.”

Now I’m not going to claim this has anything to do with Black culture but I do feel a little like a soccer mom listening to 50-Cent on a Top-40 radio station as I write this. You see, even a year after DJ Danger Mouse’s, The Grey Album hit us over the head with the possibilities of the genre, I still didn’t get the whole mash-up scene until just recently. So believe me I know that I’m way off the bloggerati radar when I try to declare just how cool this is. On a blog in 2005 no less.

But I get it now. Mashuptown has shown me the way. There are a lot of types of mash-ups, but I think the ones that really appeal to me take two songs and make them better. A perfect example is today’s link: Callin it back by Banders and Mash, which is a mix of AC/DC’s Back in Black and Lyrics Born’s Callin it out. For me this one really shows the power of a mash-up to take a song like Back in Black, strip off the cheese, and use it to power a great rap lyric. Rap has been tough for me to listen to partly because I just dig guitar rock. But the sheer cheese factor and terrible vocals of AC/DC really make you forget how good that riff is. Problem solved.

Also worth noting is Spending one of these nights with Kelly’ by Aggro1. I’m not a real big fan of either original song but I have to say that this mash-up is so great because it just feels natural. Fantastic.

Catch ya later at the flippity floppity flop.

I have to admit, part of my fascination with Virgin Radio is the cultural quirks. Hearing London traffic reports, or the UK versions of commercials for products I am and am not familiar with is a hoot. And the mix isn’t half-bad either.

I’m sure from a coporate influence standpoint it is no less pure than the local pop stations here in Oklahoma City (which I refuse to listen to), but something in me says the Brit pop like Keane, Travis, and Snow Patrol beats the crap out of the US pop pantheon of Britney Spears, J-Lo, and Ashley Simpson.

Give it a listen

Speaking just after the event, Bono, U2’s lead singer, said the band was not charging Apple a penny to be in the ad. (The band says it had turned down as much as $23 million to use its music in other commercials.) In its three-year life, the iPod has achieved such “iconic value,” Bono said, that U2 gets as much value as Apple does from the commercial, by promoting its music and the new Red and Black U2 edition of the iPod, for which the band gets royalties.

Until the iPod’s myriad competitors figure out that this is what they are competing against, hardware specifications be damned, this is going to remain a one horse race.

An article in Wired News today captured my feelings on this device very accurately.

So, for example, music allows people to use their eyes when they’re listening in public. I call it nonreciprocal looking. Listening to music lets you look at someone but don’t look at them when they look back. The earplugs tell them you’re otherwise engaged. It’s a great urban strategy for controlling interaction.

It’s also very cinematic. The music allows you to construct narratives about what’s going on.

Its amazing the detachment, the feeling of being in a personal space, that one gets by putting on a pair of headphones and listening to music. I particularly enjoy listen to music while shopping—perfect for canceling-out the hubbub of a busy grocery store or mall. And, of course, the ability to tune out the periphery at work is another great use.

The iPod has liberated me from the mundane and given legs to portions of my music collection that I haven’t touched in years. Pretty powerful stuff.

Grey Tuesday is an online protest by people who support Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album and are concerned about the state of art and copyright law in the United States.

The album is an independent remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ The White Album. EMI, the company who claims copyrights to The Beatles’ works has sent numerous cease and desist notices to stores and websites distributing this work. Despite the critical acclaim of this important work, EMI has only shown interest in the protection of profits, further demonstrating the stifling of art in the name of financial gain. In this case we see a viably marketable work that is denied sale due to the hoarding of copyrights by the big five record companies.

Opponents of current copyright law in the U.S., arguably the most stringent in the world, have shown time and again the foundation on derivative work that many of the current copyright proponents are built upon. Disney has long been one of the biggest lobbyists of increasing the reach of copyright law as noted by Lawrence Lessig in one of his numerous keynotes:

Here’s my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But what you probably don’t recognize about Steamboat Willie and his emergence into Mickey Mouse is that in 1928, Walt Disney, to use the language of the Disney Corporation today, “stole” Willie from Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill.”

It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928, no [waiting] 14 years—just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did [laughter] to produce the Disney empire. This was his character. Walt always parroted feature-length mainstream films to produce the Disney empire, and we see the product of this. This is the Disney Corporation: taking works in the public domain, and not even in the public domain, and turning them into vastly greater, new creativity. They took the works of this guy, these guys, the Brothers Grimm, who you think are probably great authors on their own. They produce these horrible stories, these fairy tales, which anybody should keep their children far from because they’re utterly bloody and moralistic stories, and are not the sort of thing that children should see, but they were retold for us by the Disney Corporation. Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone.

Transcript courtesy of O’Reilly Network

Disney built a media empire in the very type of culture that they, just like the big five, are now trying to destroy. Without the ability to make derivative work, Disney likely would not exist today. It is frightening to think of the art that will not exist tomorrow because it cannot be created to day.

Oh, and give The Grey Album a listen.

Yesterday the company I work for laid off several of my co-workers. While I certainly understand that these things happen in the world of business, it still is difficult to stare at the empty desks of people with whom you used to work. It has been a rough couple of days and I find myself equally dispondent and grateful that I am still employed.

I wish each of them the very best.

Its odd outside today. I left the office at lunch to pickup my CD and it was suprisingly warm — nearly 70 degrees but it smelled of winter, of cold. Odd.

Not only is it a fantastic MP3 player with neat playlist management, but iTunes also is great for organizing your collection. Using the MP3 format’s ID3 tags, iTunes automatically and behind the scenes organizes your music into folders on your hard drive based by artist and album. Change the artist field of a song within iTunes and it will automatically reorganize your music folder to reflect the change. This is a really under-discussed feature that is now available on Windows computers, too.

And of course having one-click access to hundreds of thousands of songs for $0.99 is great. Apple, combined with its marketing partners, AOL and Pepsi, is sure to own the online music download market.

After downloading the Windows version of iTunes I was thrilled to see it is a complete and identical port — feature-by-feature, the same user experience as the Mac version. Look for many shared playlists in the office very soon!

Now, if I only had an iPod.