San Francisco
I went to San Francisco between the 23rd and 29th of September. Here are my actions and random thoughts. As usual effort is sacrificed for information. Enjoy.

Napster News
The obvious place to look for Napster news is the Napster Pressroom.

Cover Bands
I recently saw a cover band, Slumberyard at the Mountain View Hotel in Glen Waverley. It was pretty damn bad. I used to see this band down at the Burvale hotel, and at the time they were a little better.. but these days.... They played Limp Bizkit, they played Rage Against the Machine. They play Red Hot Chilli Peppers. They even played a terrible cover of Powderfinger's 'My Happiness'. A bad cover of a bad song...

My friend went and saw some original music the same night. He was not impressed by PlayGround.

Who had the worse night? I at least got to see 250 people all singing Eye Of The Tiger in drunk monotone. Personally I'd have prefered to at least test out a new band.

There is nothing wrong with doing a cover or five in a set, but venues should be supporting original music a lot more. The Mountain View has three regular bands on as far as I can see, Slumberyard, Hype and Crazy Haus. Recently they're getting Peon back. They're all cover bands.

Big hand for places like The Espy in St. Kilda and the Evelyn and Price of Wales in Fizroy for at least giving original music a go.

SDMI
Salon reported someone cracked the new, yet to be official released standard for digital music encryption despite the general hacker boycot against doing so.

But apparently they havn't.

Of course it's all irrelvant. The record company that figures out how to fit in a market where music is increasingly seen as something that should be (and already is) free, will have great success.