Jason gets his heart back

Last November, I went to Jason Webley’s ‘Deathday’ performance. At the end of the performance, he removed the heart from a puppet figure of himself, which was soon attached to balloons and sent flying off over downtown Seattle. That puppet eventually landed in an alleyway downtown, and was rescued by an appreciative fan…

Chris Jr.: Something landed in front of me on the way back to the Ferry terminal…

Well, we saw the balloons land in the alley so we rushed to get them. They were in the alley, so we cut Jason free from the balloons. I have the puppet, along with the heart. I seemed to have lost the flag. I didn’t want someone who wasn’t at the show to take the puppet and wonder what the hell it was.

Jason Webley puppet

I was just going through the guestbook on Jason’s site, and it turns out that on Dec. 30th, Chris received an unusual package in the mail

I just got a package today (Dec. 30th), and a weird one, at that!  So I opened it to find Webley’s clothing!!!  And instructions which read:

  1. Remove heart from wire web.
  2. Carefully open chest.
  3. Gently place heart in chest.
  4. Light a candle.  Rest.

All of this is to be done on the eve of February 1st.

I’m sure Jason’s happy to have his heart back.

Now we’ve just got to wait until spring to see what else might be in store.

iTunes: “Sleeping Jiva” by Kula Shaker from the album K (1996, 2:02).

All I want to do is go back to bed.

I’m exhausted this morning, for no particular reason whatsoever that I can think of. Slapped the alarm for about an hour after it went off, and it was still a chore to drag myself out of bed.

The weekend was fairly uneventful — mostly just kicking back here at home, bouncing around the ‘net and importing a ton of CDs back into the computer. Nothing really overly stressful. I think this is just “one of those mornings.”

Hit the Vogue Saturday and Sunday night. The more Sundays I go, the more I think I prefer them over Saturdays.

Saturdays (and Fridays) are a mix of 80’s, 90’s and modern new-wave, gothic, and industrial, and Sundays are the club’s “Fetish Night”, with similar but slightly darker music. The biggest difference is that Fridays and Saturdays are more “tourist friendly” — there are definitely the regulars each night, but there are also a lot of the people who either just come by occasionally or are “straights” coming to get a taste of the scene. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that at all — most of the time the “tourists” aren’t too bad, it’s rare that they get overly obnoxious or offensive, and some of them actually seem to really get a kick out of the atmosphere and the music, even if it’s all new to them. It’s just that the club often gets incredibly hot and crowded. I’m usually not overly tweaked by crowds, especially in dance clubs, but I ended up leaving early on Saturday when it got to be too much for me.

Sundays, as the “Fetish Night,” are rapidly becoming my favorite night. It’s not nearly as crowded, which is probably due to a combination of it being a Sunday night (and many people have to be up early on Mondays to get to work) and the theme itself. The music is a bit darker and outfits tend to be a bit more extreme — it’s not at all rare to see people (men and women both) in little more than chaps and leather studded g-strings, “schoolgirl” outfits, bondage gear, etc. — which can be seen as extreme enough that it doesn’t lend itself to a “tourist” atmosphere. I’ve never had a problem with things like this, myself, while I don’t have any outfits along those lines in my wardrobe (I tend to neither be that flashy nor have the budget to indulge in outfits like that), I often enjoy the look of them, and many of the clubgoers are wonderful to watch (whether it be because of their personal attractiveness, their style of dress, the way they dance, or any combination of those). All in all, it’s a more relaxed night, and I’m enjoying it more each time I go.

I’ll likely not entirely cease hitting the Vogue on Saturday nights, as there are definitely times I like the busier, bustling atmosphere of a weekend night, and the slightly “pop”-ier music gets some songs in that I like dancing to that are less likey to show up on a Sunday night. However, if I had to choose just one night to hit the club on any given week, Sundays would definitely be my choice.

iTunes: “Godhead” by Nitzer Ebb from the album Ebbhead (1991, 4:29).

More on the iHPod

The HP iPod

More details of the Apple/HP iPod agreement are starting to come to light. Many people have expressed surprise that the announcement wasn’t made during the Macworld keynote, where it would have made quite a splash. Apparently, the simple reason for that is that the Macworld keynote was on Tuesday, and negotiations were “completed only after an extensive bargaining session that ran long into Wednesday night,” according to the New York Times.

The agreement…represents a significant departure for both companies. For the first time, Mr. Jobs has stepped away from the self-enclosed Apple-only strategy he has pursued since he returned to run the company in 1997. Meanwhile, Hewlett, the second-largest computer maker in the world, has put its software partner, Microsoft, on notice that it will not necessarily follow its lead in every case.

The back of the HP iPod

Additionally, one (and only one) report — that at the moment, doesn’t seem to be taken terribly seriously by most people — claims that HP “will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft’s superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year.” Now, first off, the claim that WMA is a “superior” format is questionable in and of itself (I’ve seen people on both sides of the WMA vs. AAC argument being equally rabid), and tossing that adjective into a single-sentence rumor shows enough bias that many people are discounting this rumor immediately. Additionally, the rumormonger is none other than Paul Thurrott, author of the WinInfo Super Site, who has been known to make some highly questionable claims when comparing Mac OS X and Windows in the past.

However, I’m not sure that this would be an entirely bad move on Apple’s part, if it’s true and if HP can talk them into it. Just as their partnership with HP will be opening up more potential avenues for the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, allowing Windows based iPod users to mix in previously-imported or downloaded WMA files along with their .mp3/.m4a library could give Windows users even more reason to jump on the iPod bandwagon. I wouldn’t be suprised at all if Apple has lost some iPod sales simply because there were people who were interested, but already had a large library of music encoded in WMA format, and would rather go with a competing .mp3 player than face having to re-import their entire music library.

While this may be nothing more than a Windows fanboy’s rumormongering, I’m not so sure that it should be dismissed so casually and out of hand. There may not be any way of knowing the truth until an official announcement is made one way or the other, but I think that there are potential upsides worth paying attention to.

(via MacMinute and MacRumors)

iTunes: “ToriMix v2” by DJ Wüdi from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2001, 46:37).

Announcing the…iHPod?

In an unexpected (and potentially extremely lucrative) partnership, Apple and HP announced today that HP will be re-branding and selling Apple iPods and including iTunes pre-installed on HP branded desktop computers.

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple® today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPod™, the number one digital music player in the world, and Apple’s award-winning iTunes digital music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP’s customers.

As part of the alliance, HP consumer PCs and notebooks will come preinstalled with Apple’s iTunes® jukebox software and an easy-reference desktop icon to point consumers directly to the iTunes Music Store, ensuring a simple, seamless music experience.

ZDNet provided more details:

Apple will manufacture the player, which will not have the iPod name but will have the same design and features as Apple’s third-generation iPod players, Phil Schiller, senior vice president at Apple, said in an interview. Also, the HP music player will come in “HP Blue,” he said.

“The way we look at it, HP will be reselling an iPod device,” said Schiller, who noted that the device will display the Apple logo at start-up and will work with all of the accessories made for the white-hued Apple varieties.

I can’t see this as being anything but an incredibly good deal all around. Apple, iTunes, and the iTunes Music Store get a lot more exposure than they had previously with the bundling agreement, Apple also has a far greater potential sales base for the iPod from customers who might not look at something obviously from Apple but won’t mind looking at something with the HP logo on it, sales of both iPods and iTMS songs rocket upwards, and even more people get to experience Apple’s high standards of quality and ease of use. Talk about a win-win scenario!

(via MacRumors)

iTMS updates

Along with all the other introductions from this morning’s keynote, the iTunes Music Store got a lot of new goodies. Somewhere around 1000 more albums have been added to the classical genre (iTMS link), they’re listing the top 100 downloaded tracks (iTMS link) of 2003, and — most interesting to me of all of these — they’ve partnered with Billboard to present the top 100 songs of 1946-2003 (iTMS link)!

Out of curiosity, I looked up the Billboard Top 100 for 1991, the year I graduated High School…

All of the following links are iTMS links, which require iTunes to be installed on your computer. Bolded items I actually have in my music collection. Apparently they don’t have all of the top 100, as there are only 68 songs listed here — I wonder who they’re missing?

  1. Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do it For You
  2. Color Me Badd: I Wanna Sex You Up
  3. C&C Music Factory: Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
  4. EMF: Unbelievable
  5. Extreme: More Than Words
  6. Hi-Five: I Like the Way
  7. Surface: The First Time
  8. Amy Grant: Baby Baby
  9. Boyz II Men: Motownphilly
  10. Damn Yankees: High Enough
  11. Bette Midler: From a Distance
  12. Color Me Badd: I Adore Mi Amor
  13. Mariah Carey: Emotions
  14. Roxette: Joyride
  15. Karyn White: Romantic
  16. Mariah Carey: I Don’t Wanna Cry
  17. Wilson Phillips: You’re In Love
  18. Amy Grant: Every Heartbeat
  19. Ralph Tresvant: Sensitivity
  20. Londonbeat: I’ve Been Thinking About You
  21. R.E.M.: Losing My Religion
  22. Gloria Estefan: Coming Out of the Dark
  23. C&C Music Factory: Here We Go, Let’s Rock and Roll
  24. Celine Dion: Where Does My Heart Beat Now
  25. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince: Summertime
  26. Scorpions: Wind of Change
  27. FireHouse: Love of a Lifetime
  28. Tracie Spencer: This House
  29. Extreme: Hole Hearted
  30. Luther Vandross: Power of Love/Love Power
  31. Wilson Phillips: Impulsive
  32. Rod Stewart: Rhythm of My Heart
  33. C&C Music Factory: Things That Make You Go Hmmm…
  34. The Divinyls: I Touch Myself
  35. DNA/Suzanne Vega: Tom’s Diner
  36. Bonnie Raitt: Something to Talk About
  37. Nelson: After the Rain
  38. Vanilla Ice: Play That Funky Music
  39. Bryan Adams: Can’t Stop This Thing We Started
  40. Hi-Five: I Can’t Wait Another Minute
  41. The KLF: 3 A.M. Eternal
  42. Enigma: Sadeness, Part I
  43. LL Cool J: Around the Way Girl
  44. Prince: Cream
  45. Heavy D and The Boyz: Now That We Found Love
  46. Styx: Show Me the Way
  47. Mariah Carey: Love Takes Time
  48. Rick Astley: Cry For Help
  49. UB40: Here I Am (Come and Take Me)
  50. Tesla: Signs (Live)
  51. Cathy Dennis: Too Many Walls
  52. Seal: Crazy
  53. Keith Sweat: I’ll Give All My Love to You (Live)
  54. Michael W. Smith: Place in This World
  55. Poison: Something to Believe In
  56. Chris Isaak: Wicked Game
  57. Oleta Adams: Get Here
  58. Tevin Campbell: Round and Round
  59. Queensrÿche: Silent Lucidity
  60. Aaron Neville: Everybody Plays the Fool
  61. Cathy Dennis: Just Another Dream
  62. INXS: Disappear
  63. Sting: All This Time
  64. George Michael: Freedom
  65. Warrant: I Saw Red
  66. Winger: Miles Away
  67. Rod Stewart: The Motown Song
  68. R.E.M.: Shiny Happy People

I used to be a DJ / Gig’s Music Theater

Some of my long-time readers (and family and friends) will already know that prior to moving down to Seattle, I spent around eight years of my time in Anchorage DJ’ing for a number of dance clubs. From City Lights, to The Lost Abbey, to Gig’s Music Theater, to The Eclipse, and finally to Studio 99, I spun practically every possible genre — alternative, industrial, punk, goth, 80’s retro, new wave, disco, swing, techno, house, trance, and even (though I grumbled a lot) the occasional top-40 and R&B — and had an absolute blast doing it.

I finally got tired of letting my old domain sit inactive after moving my weblog to TypePad, and have resurrected djwudi.com as a monument (however small) to my years as a club DJ. In addition to some oddly third-person ramblings about my career, there are no less than (though no more than) eleven different mix sessons posted and available for either download or streaming audio listening. Ten of them are even worth listening to — the eleventh (Difficult Listening Hour 03) has some truly horrendous trainwrecking going on, and I only leave it posted out of my anal-retentive need for a complete set.

Anyway, feel free to stop by, download or stream the mixes that are there, and (hopefully) enjoy! Who knows — I may not have a club gig anymore, but since I’ve still got my equipment and a ton of music, there’s always a slim chance that there may be more in the future…

As an added bonus, I’ve resurrected the last archived version of the Gig’s Music Theater website that I maintained for the club. This archive dates from March 30, 1998, and serves both as a nostalgic remembrance of one of the best all-ages clubs in Anchorage’s history, and as a monument to my web design and coding skills at the time. ;) Hopefully some of Gig’s old patrons might get a kick out of this (especially the pictures in the ‘Scene’ section)! I also have an archive of old flyers for Gig’s that I made, though I’ve mentioned those before.

Sympathy for the Devil remixes

Apparently the Rolling Stones just released a new CD of remixes of Sympathy for the Devil. For me, this is definitely a must-get (and thanks to the beauty of Amazon and credit cards, should be in my happy little hands in a few days).

Sympathy for the Devil has been one of my favorite songs for years, and I’ve collected quite a few versions over the years. I’m sure I don’t have all of the various versions out there yet, but so far I’ve managed to dig up:

  • The Rolling Stones, from Beggars Banquet: The original.
  • Jane’s Addiction, from Jane’s Addiction: just titled “Sympathy” here, Perry and the boys deliver a blistering live cover during one of their early concerts. One of my favorite versions.
  • Guns and Roses, from the Interview with the Vampire soundtrack: A solid but fairly straightforward cover, nothing terribly fancy.
  • Skrew, from Shut Up Kitty: A rather noisy, almost unrecognizable industrial cover. Not at all one of the best, but it comes from a fun album of industrial covers of old songs that is pretty solid overall (but more notable for KMFDM’s cover of U2’s “Mysterious Ways” and Blue Eyed Christ’s cover of Animotion’s “Obsession”, to tell the truth).
  • Laibach, from Sympathy for the Devil: German industrial band Laibach’s single contains no less than seven different mixes of their cover, ranging from dark-and-gloomy brooding to bright-and-bouncy dancefloor versions which were popular when I was DJ’ing back at Gig’s.

I think that those are all the versions I have now, at least until this new disc appears on my doorstep (though as I’m still working my way through my CD collection, there may be one or two more that I’ve forgotten). According to Flocculent, the new versions aren’t bad at all, either.

“Pleased to meet you…won’t you guess my name…”

Madacy != metadata

I’ve babbled before about my anal-retentive obsession with metadata when it comes to my music collection. Today, I remembered one of my major frustrations: the Madacy Music Group.

I’ve been slowly working my way through re-encoding my music collection. I’d had it all ripped to my old computer as .mp3s, but now that I have my G5 with the extra storage space and processing speed, I decided to re-encode everything as .m4a. Less space, better quality, and all that. While I could have just pulled all the .mp3 files over and done a mass convert to .m4a, I wanted to get the best quality possible, which necessitates encoding from the original CDs. No problem — it’s a big project (with upwards of 1200 CDs to go through), but worth it in the long run.

As I’m going through, I’m ensuring that each imported CD has all the correct metadata for each track — title, artist, composer, and year of release — which most of the time isn’t a problem, as all this is generally listed in the CD booklet that comes with each album. However, over the years I’ve occasionally ended up with albums from Madacy, who seem to specialize in ultra-low cost compliations. I’m not sure how I end up with them, as they’re generally not something I’d go for (cheap in more than just price), but I’ve got a few.

The thing is, apparently one of the many cost-cutting measures that Madacy employs is simply giving as little information as possible about the songs included on their compilations. I just ripped a 3-disc set of Irish folk music where the only information given for any of the 44 tracks was the title — no performing artist, no composer, nada. Grrrrrr.

I know this kind of stuff (especially to this extreme) matters not a whit to most people, but dammit, it matters to me, and having to deal with a company this shoddy about their releases is just frustrating.

From vinyl to .mp3

The New York Times has a decent overview of how to transfer vinyl recordings to .mp3 (or AAC, or whatever your digital format of choice may be). This could come in very handy at some undetermined point in the future, whenever the family record collection swings my way again (currently I believe it’s in Fairbanks somewhere with Kevin’s stuff, though I’m not entirely sure).

(via Paul Beard and Cory Doctorow)

Update: MetaFilter links to another site looking at the same process: Converting Tapes and Records to CD.