Filed under: music
Spent a good portion of the night in my headphones, after completing a bunch of work for school. After listening to a bunch of Radiohead podcasts (search iTunes to see if they’re still available, I downloaded them months ago) which had rough cuts of all their tracks from In Rainbows, along with video of the band laying the tracks down in the studio, I decided to finally, actually purchase the “new” album at iTunes.
I’m way behind on this, I know.
I should have participated in their “download and set your own price, if any” experiment, to show my support for their innovative attempt at breaking the stranglehold that traditional labels have on music distribution and rights.
Then, once the album was fully, regularly released, I was happy to see it was an EMI track, at least, so that it qualified for iTunes Plus (no DRM, 256kbps). I’ve set out a rule for myself that I no longer buy DRMed stuff.
But to take it to the next level, Radiohead then on iTunes released the “stems” from their song “Nude.” Stems are the individual musicians’ tracks, eg the bass line, the drum track, etc. You could buy them and remix them at will. They would also send you a link to a fully editable GarageBand file to remix. Very cool, except that artists like Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) have already done such experiments, without asking people to pay. The whole experiment is great advertising. I don’t think you should make the participants pay to do your advertising.
http://www.radioheadremix.com/
Never the less the results have been impressive. So many masterfully made tracks, all very different from each other. This week I saw a full-fledged video built around Nude, in a way that defies explanation. You need to watch it. Be patient, it takes about a minute to really get into it. Brilliant.
I had a lot of respect for Senator Hillary Clinton before she entered the 2008 Presidential campaign. She had lived through a lot of public turmoil, with many personal attacks from conservatives during her time in as First Lady. She tried to use the First Lady’s position as one that could actually accomplish something meaningful, other than hosting teas and giving tours of the White House.
She set back the cause of universal health care in this country 50 years when she bungled that task. Granted, it wasn’t totally her fault, she was just acting like the Republicans who were attacking her on the issue.
Then, she had the great personal tragedy for all the world to see, all while trying to raise a teenager in the White House. Then she recovers a few years later from all this to successfully become a Senator in a state she’d never lived in. She certainly is a fighter, and she dedicated her life to the public, despite all the personal difficulty it may have caused for her.
But now, we’ve seen her Presidential campaign.
She’s repeatedly been unable to properly budget her campaign’s finances. She’s repeatedly had to “loan” her campaign millions from her personal fortune. All while claiming she’ll be able to run the national budget better than the current administration—who is also always taking out loans to finance its hi-jinx.
She conveniently bends the truth to make it fit her agenda, whenever it’s convenient for her. If you disagree, her surrogates will attack you. She’s all for the rules… that are beneficial to her. She’s against rules that are “unfair” even if she was for them just a few months ago.
She’ll say anything for an applause line. Drop the gas tax? Sure. It doesn’t make any financial sense, but what do economists know? It’s get me a few votes!
She’ll leverage racist poor whites to advance her personal agenda, and tell us “You never know, look what happened to Bobby Kennedy.”
Despite absolutely no chance of winning a fight she’s quagmired in, she refuses to quit, continuing to fight on wasting untold millions, at untold cost to her party’s ultimate success in November. All for personal glory.
Now I have no personal respect for Senator Clinton. Senator Clinton represents all that is wrong with the Democratic Party. Senator Clinton is one example of why I am not a Democrat.
