Click below to see a really excellent outburst by Conor Oberst at the Shortlist Music awards, railing against clear channel, and a side note about bush.
Qt Movie
The continued demise of our popular culture.
What happened to the writers? I may be wrong, but it occurs to me that the wave of reality TV came around the same time as the writers guild was preparing to strike.
And the few scripted shows left on tv seem to be dying off or seriously losing quality in the writing, and plots. Maybe the hollywood owners & producers are trying to show the writers that they're not needed.
The world is sick of reality tv, but with nothing else on half the time, people are choosing between one reality show and the other, keeping the ratings decent.
Me, I've rarely turned on the TV since December when I moved to Virginia and left the TiVo behind. It's rerun season anyway. I may be turning into one of those grumpy old people that doesn't watch tv. But I've got plenty of good old tv on DVD. Now if only they would release the Daria DVD's I'd be set for a couple of years.
REV 105 - off the air! - Revolution Radio
It could happen to you. Here are some thoughts I posted to fark.com this morning about the demise of radio, and WHFS 99.1:
First and foremost: Clear Channel's content is no worse than Viacom/CBS/Infinity, et al.
All the corporate behemoths are going after the same 52% of the market which is an odd shift in business practice that all the media companies seemed to be moving towards since the late 90's.
Clear Channel is more evil than most because of their bullying business practices not rivaled even by walmart.
Among the highlights: Clear Channel bought out one of the largest booking / promotion firms in the US. They then leveraged their radio stations to force bands to book through them. Being a massive promotion company, they also have exclusive deals with certain venues. You want to play boston, you have to go through clear channel, for promotion, for airplay, and then play by the pay for play rules as determined by them.
It is rumoured that Clear Channel called in its debts (political contributions, etc.) to get the Field Day Festival in NY/NJ cancelled shortly before the event.
They are worse than everybody else, read up on the facts at
salon.com - Radio's Big Bully
WHFS 99.1 had the same thing happen to them. They got bought by Viacom.
It's hysterical, now they keep repeating "The Legendary 99.1 HFS" as if they need to remind people about it, because all they have left is the memory of the good days and they want to squeeze the last cent out of it.
It also cracks me up how their morning show plugs the local CBS station about 10 times a morning, more on fridays. Hmm what are the chances CBS is owned by viacom?
Shameless.
Yahoo! News - Phony Hiltons buy plenty of pizza: "U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) might want to open an investigation into these findings -- he was No. 2 on the list of assumed names used by people ordering pizza. "
I'm going to have to try that. LOL!
So now that I have a webpage, I figured I ought to share my Launchcast station.
Gurn's Launchcast Station
It's mostly the stuff I listen to, and have listened to that stands the test of time.
New bands:
Earlimart, Ash, Interpol, Division of Laura Lee, The Catheters, The Faint, etc..
Old Bands:
Talking Heads, Radiohead, The Smiths, Camper Van Beethoven, Joy Division, Jesus and Mary Chain...
Coming soon some stuff about music.
L8r
Good end to a bad day. I got the Joy Division Box set for christmas after a crappy day of fighting bureacracy at work, only to come home and try to fight through the government bureacracy trying to figure out how many pieces of paper I have to fill out and get faxed from various companies to get my plates back in va.
Whatever happened to "full faith" in other states' laws? I've been through this once already going to massachusetts and I'm not looking forward to doing it again.
TMBG is playing New year's eve at the 9:30. I don't know if I'm going to go or not. Partly due to apathy and sloth, partly due to the fact that I've grown to hate the 9:30 club now that I've been to actual "small" clubs, and partly due to the fact that we have to park in that shitty neighborhood in DC that the 9:30 is in, since the metro closes before the show will end.
Oh yeah and I'm enjoying my massive Koss noise reduction headphones. I could've really used them on the turbo prop plane that finished the last leg of my flight yesterday from philly to DC.
Launchcast is playing luscious jackson. Very cheesy, but takes me back to "the day". And that confirms that I have nothing useful to say, so I shall post later.
