Indie 69 July 2010 New Music Playlist Released.

Indie 69 July 2010 Cover Art

Wow. So that was a pain in the ass. I go to upload this evening and once again… I get the

MUSIAYLIST BUG at TPB.

It seems it’s IMPOSSIBLE to upload anything with “New Music Playlist” at the end of the upload name, no matter how you separate it, no matter that it’s not over the character limit. Nothing fixes it except placing it at the beginning of the name. *

So this month, the Indie 69 2010 New Music Playlist is called….

NewMusicPlaylist Indie 69 2010

Combine that with a captcha system that is itself WRONG 75% of the time, cover art that despite being the exact size TPB requires to be included in a torrent description is rejected over and over. Even when you use their own re-sizing tool. A description field that won’t let me include links to cover art credit where it’s due. A tracker that rejects torrents being re-upped once they’ve been deleted because of a torrent name bug they refuse to fix, without adding new files so the tracker thinks it’s a different torrent. And you have the ULTIMATE testing of one’s patience and tolerance. Now, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE The Bay. Endlessly. But how many hoops do I have to jump through to SHARE, exactly? Well, it turns out, quite a fucking few. It’s a free service, one that has served the world like no other service ever has. And I temper my frustrations with a modicum of respect and admiration. But it’s still FRUSTRATING. And I’ll be damned if I’m not going to mention it. A lot of people would just quit. So instead of being selfish about it, I’m just going to vent here a little instead. Mm-kay? Good. Now I’m done with that.

THAT is not the reason for the playlist being late again. There are a hundred personal reasons for that. And I won’t bore you with any of it. But I’ve been keeping very busy lately, making people I care about think I don’t care about them. Letting things slide when I never would have before. And just generally being grumpy about it all while trying to smile as some people around me look oddly puzzled about it all simply because they’re not around to see what I do all day. When that’s the reason why I have to do it. Others are not doing those things, so someone has to. That someone is me right now. Then they check my blog and say “hey, didn’t he say he was asleep?” and “Oh… I see he has time to BLOG”. But the reality is I schedule all my posts now and when I do these things like blogging, answering e-mail, putting together playlists, I do it all at the loss of my own time. And yes, sometimes that time is for sleep. But if I know you personally, and you see something like a Twitter notification or a blog post from me… that does NOT mean I’m awake. Just want to make that clear. And please do not superimpose your own anger over my words. I’m not even remotely angry. I don’t have the energy to be angry. I cannot think of a single person I’m mad at. Period.

This month’s playlist, as long as it took to finally come together, is one of my favorites. In spite of the fact that there’s a ton of what some call “Chillwave” this month. A genre I’m not always fond of. But people seem to be playing with it a lot and breaking rules, so there’s some interesting stuff you shouldn’t be so quick to categorize just yet. Give it all a chance and I bet after a few listens you’ll find yourself coming back to a LOT of these tracks as I have. I like lo-fi stuff a lot. But some artists have taken it way too far and in my opinion, when it sounds like crap.. sometimes it JUST sounds like crap. You have to attack lo-fi with material that elevates itself above the low production value or you just end up with a non-catchy, un-hummable, noisy, muddy mess with zero value. Luckily, there’s not much of that here this month. As a matter of fact, I need a new MP3 player with more space because of this month and last month. A lot of stuff I just cannot bring myself to delete and replace with new tracks. And unless you have one of those iPods with practically unlimited storage, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.

Enough jibber-jabber.

You can find the NewMusicPlaylist Indie 69 July 2010 HERE and at all the usual haunts.

Stay cool and I’ll see you in.. ohcrap… AUGUST already? Make the summer last. It feels like a short one. (TWSS)

P.S. – If you’ve found the chatroom and it’s sadly empty, that’s because I have had NO time for chatting. I’m sure that will change at some point. But not right away. Sorry about that. Go there, stick around and maybe others will show up if you actually wait around for the next person to do what you did. I know people are looking for it and using it a lot because “indie music chatroom” is oddly one of the top searches that lead to this blog. But I think they are ALL popping in for 1 minute and not sticking around. Stick around and wait for the next person. Or don’t. But either way, it’s still there. I’m not.

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*Does it have something to do with PL being used in Perl scripting? PL is a filename extension. Is it a security measure/error? Hard to say. And I don’t have time to go there and beg for an answer.

Indie Music Chatroom (reminder post)

If you look up and a bit to the right, you’ll see a page called “Chatroom”, right next to “about”. It’s really easy to use. I’m posting this reminder because, well, honestly, it’s a friggen ghost town. Now, I cannot guarantee that I’ll be there when you get the chance to stop by, but on that page you’ll find times I WILL be there. And if more and more people stop in, I will expand those times. But I’ll never be around chatting as often as I used to chat. I’ve found out that I just cannot healthily commit to that much of my time, no matter the rewards. (oh, I know.. whine moan.. whine.. whine) And MY presence is not necessary for it to become a great place to be(obviously). I just imagine in my little brain that the people who come here and actually read these posts are most likely a little less douchey than the people you’d run into on the larger network’s music chat channels.

And who knows, maybe if you stop in the night before the first of the month, say around 10pm pacific time, it’s possible that there could be a special link there for a direct download of something you usually download slowly on the first. 😉

Maybe.

And once I figure out what the server’s rules are considering file serving bots, I will set up a script after switching back to mIRC to automagically upload files and allow you to browse a sort of earlybird folder featuring new tracks being considered for the playlist every month. Should be fun and very easy to use. I’ve done it before, but I’ll have to go back to the shed for a bit and brush up on my scripting skill-set. If you can even call it that.  I probably will not have this set up until the end of April, to be realistic. And if there are any sharp script-folks familiar with mIRC scripting or knows of a great file server script for mIRC, leave a comment or e-mail me at indiesixtynine@gmail.com (not indie69.. indiesixtynine.. very important difference).

Hope to chat with you soon. I will need OPs for the channel as it grows, so let me know if you have experience with this and we’ll discuss it.

Tummelvision – Netcast-Podcast Review

always seems to get the best of me

I stumbled onto Tummelvision by accident one day popping in on the TWIT chatroom and live stream on a Thursday, as I often do randomly. The people in that chatroom, by the way, have to be the nicest large chatroom group of people I’ve ever encountered. Helpful, friendly, welcoming, not kick-ban-happy, knowledgeable, diverse and just generally smart and funny. A little rare, if you ask me. But enough about them for now, as great as they are. This Tummelvision show was a real shock of a discovery. The hosts (Deborah Schultz,Heather Gold,Kevin Marks) and guests were amazing, sharp people with the gift of gab. So there I was in the chatroom commenting on the subject being discussed when out of no-where, I hear my nickname mentioned on the show itself. Wow! Quick ego-injection aside, this show was not only keeping track of the chatroom, they were interacting with it! After a short time, I became aware that if they didn’t interact with the chatroom/community, it would have been near hypocrisy. See, the show is about community, in a way. And community-building.

.It’s about a little more than just being the “life of the party”. In this context it can be more about community-building, even if the community is temporary or brief.  Or consider perhaps just connection-making. Was there someone who introduced Jobs to Wozniak? Or maybe just placed them in the same room?And will history record that person’s name? Probably not. But Tummelvision could make a go of ensuring the next person who makes that kind of momentous connection at least gets a mention here and there, if not some deserved credit.

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tummler

1. An employee – usually male** – of a Catskill Mountains resort charged with the duty of entertaining guests throughout the day by providing any number of services, from comedian to master of ceremonies.
2. A lively, puckish man.

In this time of “Social Media Gurus”, which are as common as fleas, only more annoying, intrusive and difficult to get rid of*,  it could be easy to group these people with the self-proclaimed gurus. (not that there is another kind of guru, if you’re really honest with yourself and others***) This could not be further from the truth in this case. These people actually have knowledge and information of value to share, AND actually share it weekly on their show. The hosts have experience and demonstrate their abilities each week, with proof visible in the chatroom itself and how it’s integrated with the show. It’s not a tease, a come-on or a half-baked scam. This is the real deal.

Now, any time you start to talk about technique or rules, methods or sciences when it comes to social interaction, you will meet with a lot of resistance/distrust. Why? Well, you probably already sense why a bit on your own. But no matter how rules-based or technique-based social interactions (that are a success) are, we’d all like to feel as though it’s all natural and instinctual. Applying technique immediately brings to mind, for some, a feeling of disingenuousness or even plain deception. But when we approach social interaction with that kind of almost dogma-like attitude, we’re kind of lying to ourselves. It may feel natural, but in reality we have our very own internalized techniques and rules. We’re just so used to applying them internally, they feel natural. They are in fact as much or as little based on nature than what this show talks about every week. And if you can get past this initial prejudice, the show has a lot to offer anyone, whether you’re a professional tummler or just a casual one throwing a party for friends. And who knows, maybe the next Jobs and Woz are coming to your little party because you thought to yourself.. hey.. “these guys should meet!”. Except this time, you can put a name to what you’ve done (although I must note Tummeling is more than just introductions, from my beginner’s exposure to the world of Tummelers) and maybe take some credit for it.

Bottom line? This is a great, fun show to watch or watch and interact with. And learn from.

You can catch the show Thursdays live HERE on the TWIT live network as well as archived HERE. And, well, get Tummeling!

(also.. Leo.. get this show on the network officially as part of the main line-up. it’s a winner)

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***There are two kinds of guru. One proclaims himself as one and has at least one respected follower. The other is self-proclaimed with few if any followers. The difference between the two is negligible except for the respect tossed in the direction of the first because of the reputation of his follower(s). Both usually claim to have secret knowledge and rarely deliver anything of non-obvious value. Both are, as noted, self-proclaimed and typically have no accomplishments beyond their self-proclamation as gurus. All of the above, it would seem, love Twitter and treat it as a “whoever dies with the most followers wins” game. One step away from garden-variety spammer.

**Surprising, eh?

*And “itchy”

Definition of Tummler from Wiktionary

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/perfectance/4311873377/

Creative Commons – Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

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