This is MP3Monster's blog. The blog covers music, technology, photography and anything else Monster considers worthy of blogging about.BBC Still Banning Songs
Posted by monster in Music
I thought the days of the BBC banning particular songs was long gone, and that the worst they did was consign the song to a minor playlist or worse. But this wouldn’t seem to be the case, as according the AlbumVote.co.uk the BBC have banned the latest single by The Sparks - Dick Around (a reference to time wasting) (article here). Understandably with BBC 6 Music and some of Radio 1’s alternative programming being one of the few potential outlets to get the single heard the Mael brothers are pretty pissed off.
The irony is, that they performed the song live on BBC 1 TV only last Friday as the closing performance on the Jonathon Ross show! Plus having just searched the BeeB’s website already been plaid a number of times on BBC 6 Music. A little late now to band the song? Doesn’t this smack of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax?
Flickr Pools
Posted by monster in General, Photography
I’ve been using Flickr for nearly a year now, and still continue to be impressed by it. We’ve principally been using it to share our photos with friends and family who spread around around the world.
However one interesting trend I’ve encountered, are Flickr pools/groups, to date I’ve used them with friends to share photos from get togethers. But it appears people have been using them for far wider associations. For example, when I posted photos from our New York trip earlier in the year I was approached, and asked if I’d contribute to a pool that is collecting photos of all the work in MOMA - an interesting idea, with all-sorts of potentially interesting implications if it becomes a wide spread occurrence.
Then as a result of posting photos from the Scissor sisters gig in Trafalgar Square, we’ve been asked if we’d contribute to the Scissor Sister’s pool of that event which can be found at http://www.flickr.com/groups/motoredsquare/pool/.
I mentioned, that such pools if they become a wider spread idea, could have some interesting implications. Consider, if you could go online and see images from every exhibit in MOMA , would you still go? Personally yes I would, but is my view representative? But I would take advantage of such pools to help identify which exhibitions within MOMA I would like to see. The MOMA pool can be found here.
As cameras become increasingly smaller, cleverer and greater resolutions, what will happen to photo journalism, as pools like the Scissor Sisters ones may end providing publishers with suitable sources of images from events around the world?
Mark Thomas - Live
Posted by monster in General
I was lucky enough to see Mark Thomas perform live last night. For those who haven’t heard of Mark, he is part investigative journalist, part comedian and part campaigner.
Mark’s research and knowledge on things he investigates upon is tremendous. For example, the SOCPA legislation which includes provisions to prevents demonstration near Parliament without a license - a crazy law that was passed ostensibly to help protect parliament from terrorism, like a terrorist would worry about small legal issues as that. The definition of demonstration means that for one or more people to demonstrate about anything requires a license to be issued by the Police. So Mark, related how he addressed this organising individual demonstrations on subjects like ‘the decline of surrealism’ and going as far as arranging for several hundred people to demonstrate together, all demonstrating for their own thing on the same day - creating hilarious results. For more about this see Mark’s website here.
Then there is the question is celebrating Guy Fawkes night, actually an act of glorifying terrorism now? If so, how many years will you get sent down for if you wave a sparkler about?
Although these things may not sound very funny, Mark’s humour comes from relating back the characters that he comes across, on his travels and the juxtapositions of some of the situations he finds himself in when investigating or trying to highlight issues.
The tour in part is to help promote his new book about the arms trade and the extent that they will go to circumvent national and international legislation. I got an autographed copy of the book last night and started reading, initial impression is that it is as both entertaining and informative as his live show - so would recommend it, even if you don’t agree with his views.
The Times have a review of an earlier performance in the tour here.
iTunes Users
Posted by monster in Music, Technology
The BBC and Digital Music News (and I’m sure others as well) have articles about the results of some research by Jupiter Research. The research shows how little iTunes use gets, compared to the number of iPods incirculation and the alternative sources of music to load onto them. The report indicates that people draw the bulk of their music on their iPods from CDs that they own and to an extent P2P file sharing.
The most interesting point that the BeeB highlights is the fact that people who tend to have these devices also tend to purchase more CDs. So, despite the integration of iTunes and iPods - people at the end of the date like to have something real that they can touch and feel.
Scissor Sisters Live - Red Square
Posted by monster in General
We have been fortunate enough to have won a pair of tickets to see the Scissor Sisters as part of their Red Square concert in Trafalgar Square, London. I got to try my Sony Ericsson K800i phone camera in anger for the first time, and this is one of the results (a complete set is on our Flickr site http://photos.mp3monster.org)
Guerrilla Art
Posted by monster in General
The Guerrilla Artists Banksy is getting a lot of press at the moment, with another article on the BeeB news site. I found it rather amusing that in the BBC article some of the people interviewed couldn’t get their head around some of his simple messages.
If you’d like to see more interesting work, then check out his website here.
Free Really Legal Downloads - SpiralFrog
Posted by monster in General, Music
Following on from an earlier blog entry (here) about SpiralFrog providing legal, freedownloads - EMI have now made an agreement to license their music to the service, that puts the catalogues of two of the largest players into the service. In addition to this, EMI have approved the use of lyrics as well on the site. If my recollection is correct about nine months ago EMI was one of the players that spent time trying to shutdown lyric search engines.
The Motoring Darwin Awards?
Posted by monster in General
There seems to be a rising number of cases of people trying to do something (illegal) about speed cameras. The cases that I’ve seen have actually resulted in the individual(s) end up being hurt or prosecuted for more serious crimes and receiving greater punchishment as a result. So I’d like to suggest a new form of Darwin award for motorists where nominees end up beig prosecuted for more serious crimes as a result of trying to avoid speeding charges.
Here are my first nominees:
- Manchester Bomber (story here)
- Caught in the Act (story here)
Feel free to post links to more nominees in the blog comments 
Mercury Music Prize 2006 Announced
Posted by monster in Music
This year’s Mercury Music Prize has been awarded to the Arctic Monkeys - not my choice, but there you go. Anyway more information can be found at the Award’s website here.
CV
Posted by monster in Website
Well I’ve finally found a little more time to add a bit more to the rest of the website. So now the CV page is up. I only need to update the CV - shouldn’t take more than another couple of months
Paris Hilton Prank
Posted by monster in General
The BBC have an amusing article on their news site. It appears that somone has tampered copies of her album replacing the artwork and CD with their own take on her work. More here.
Will Podcasts replace Streamcasts?
Posted by monster in Technology
Over the last 18 months or so podcasting has taken off in a big way, so much so your non-IT-literate Joe in the street will have heard of podcasts and will have a vague idea as to they are. At the same time the talk of live feed streaming seems to be mentioned less and less. While I can’t see major radio stations like those at the BBC experiencing a large decline in demand for live streamed feeds, but I am curious to know if the small independent solutions that use shoutcast etc are seeing a drop off in usage, or is the convenience and continuous nature of these feeds the one thing that keeps them attractive over podcasts?
If the streaming casts are unaffected by the rise of the podcast, then there is an opportunity for podcast radio? Essentially DJs put their shows together in the same manner as a podcast and then someone streams it out using shoutcast or the alike. In the world of buzzwords should we rename online radio stations to streaming podcasts?
Has Dylan become a Judas now?
Posted by monster in Music
Bob Dylan was famously accused of becoming a Judas at his 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall gig for going electric. A criticism that deeply offended him at the time. Dylan may have been faithful to what he believes is true for his music, but appears to have really sold out now - you can find on the Apple site a video clip of him performing as part of an advert (go here). Yet, in the next breath he is slating technology big time to Wired magazine (article here).
Why sell out now, with Dylan a cultural icon, and certainly not having problem selling albums?
