bbluesman=Mark Forman

I must confess, I’m not an old NIN fan boy, but I am more and more impressed by Trent Reznor. His musical ability is solid, but I’m even more impressed by his cultivating and responding to his followers and grasp of the Net culture whereas so many from the music business are completely clueless on that score. The new work is not the best I’ve heard by them, but I’d rate it 7.5* out of 10*. Like I said today to a NIN-loving friend I’d rather have a 7-8 NIN effort than a 9 or 10 of many other people. Trent’s explanation for the free release is that he wants to thank the Net for helping him make 1.6 million smackers on the last go. Good for him. Nice to know that with ingenuity, hard work and sensitivity to one’s market(in this case:listener’s) people can actually make real money on the internet and also have the exchange happen quickly and directly between marketer and market.

Download your NIN album:The Slip here

It’s unusual with all the web apps and shiny devices on the Net these days that I come across something that is so useful and it’s utility/benefit so apparent. Apture appears to be just that. Enabling easy multimedia rich file linking without messing with CSS or HTML language in the guts of your site. It also aggregates an abundant amount of multimedia resources for you to mash up with to tie in with your topic. Good job Apture team! Many examples of the links in post below.

So I’m wondering if Liz Strauss has really great taste in blogs? After all this is second time one of my blogs was selected by her to win her SOB blog award. First time was over at my A.Connector site. So what gives? Does Liz have like really impeccable taste like me? Can it be she is warped like me? Both? Hmm, anyhow-thanks Liz glad you’re exploring and connecting.

I was asked by Jack Mangan a good friend of mine if I’d like to contribute some audio commentary on Joe Murphy’s 1 year memorial. I thought about it and just didn’t “feel it.” I don’t know why-maybe just not in the audio mode these days. It doesn’t matter. So who is Joe Murphy? Joe was a fairly normal and decent guy surrounded by some quasi-abnormal indecent people(full disclosure: all in jest) that did Winging It-one of the early successful sci-fi podcasts. I met Joe when I visited the studio that Winging It podcast was recorded in. The place was quite busy that day and the air was filled with snark and tension; some from Evo Terra in his audio game face mode preparation, some from TD-0013 because that’s the way he rolls, et al. That was all part of the Winging It vibe. Joe just brought the:(pause)”brilliant.”

The key thing about Joe was that he was a kind and gentle spirit who was stricken by a harsh fatal disease; dying way too sudden and way too young. I don’t have a lot of Joe stories to share, the people I mentioned above and others here do. Please listen and reflect and realize that there are and will be many others like Joe, sadly even among our friends and family. I know that Joe being the quality guy that he was, would be honored knowing that his life and death could be a touchstone for helping other people. Brilliant!

Leg Up listener from Germany-Ulrike sent this gift of Easter candy. You rock Ulrike!

Had my first real connection with Utterz. I’ve used it and replied to some of my friends several times, but today just listened to a reply from Rich Palmer and I really loved it. Rich answered a question I left home regarding his post on Boston Stoker coffee. He told a great story, I loved it so I’m sharing it. What do you think?

Future of Music and music as a stream advocate Gerd Leonhard has just published this new book which is a collection of essays on the distribution of music in this post Napster online P2P world. You can buy a copy or download .pdf for free. Gerd’s ideas on this space are quite brilliant and probably very realistic as many of his initial projections are basically occurring now.

derek728ia

Ryan a new member of Xacti Users Group I’m part of has really nice VOG(his term for video blog). He posted this really touching piece on a memorial in honor of a young boy that was tragically murdered in Honolulu by his neighbor. rather than saying, “hope you enjoy it”-I’ll just say watch it and reflect a little.

aronski

Your Brooklyn Bluesman friend is certainly eclectic in his musical tastes. Don’t really cover much jazz in my Getting a Leg Up podcasts. Not because I don’t love tons of it(I do) just because I feel I need to maintain some kind of boundaries to keep me from flying off into the vortex(or some such pseudo-sci fi babble -:) )

I recently searched for streaming jazz stations and came up with a gem: KJZZ. They feature mostly mainstream or traditional jazz as opposed to the more contemporary or “lite jazz” and some solid blues programming on the weekend. Signal strength and clarity is excellent. My 2 favorite DJs are Jose Rizo: awesome Latin jazz program, and Bob Parlocha: great variety of jazz from across the spectrum.

PS: yes Virginia, they are playing some nice Christmas jazz mixed in without being totally obnoxious or smarmy.

If you used to shop the import record stores like I did(warning:If you don’t know what a record is please skip down to post below with nice video-:) ) you’ll probably remember the fanzine Trouser Press. Well it’s been on the web for a while and serves as online encyclopedia for all those prog, foreign,indie, punk and new wave bands. They also have a forum which is perfect for long term music geeks like me to chat with others on the esoterica of our collective musical knowledge.