And so I start a-frigging-gain.... I'm updating this on each heading so wait a bit and you'll get more lovely news/ranting/other crap.
Tax
The French were going to tax CDr media to pay off the poor starved record industry, just like wacky old Germany were going to... but they've changed their minds.
The idea of taxing CDr (and other blank media and blank media writing machines) is very similar to an idea I linked to a couple of days ago about taxing net users on the content they download assuming it is all copyright.
When put together like this it's obvious how stupid the bandwidth idea is. Sorry buddy. Assuming something is going to be used illegally and taxing all users on it is a crap idea and will never work. HOWEVER you could set up a section of the net that was always used for copyright material and charge people downloading from that... but that wasn't the point of the article was it?
Pete Townshend
Pete plays with Napster and writes about his experience on his webpage. He loved it... and made him think record companies as he sees them today (money collectors for artists) are useless. They can't possibly protect his copyright from this technology. It's people like this (ancients in the music industry) who really have the biggest base to start talking about the problems that exist today. We should all listen to them...
themusic.com.au
IMEDIA!, producers of the Australiasian Music Industry Directory and the people behind the Onya awards have redesigned and relaunched their site as themusic.com.au. They have some very switched on people writing articles for them. A great deal of very relevant internet/artist related material.
You can see my house from here
My old house in Moranbah, cruddy little BHP mining town in Queensland. Follow the arrow, go down to the nearest road (black straight thing), follow it right until it's end to the yellow grassy patch between houses. The big long house above that patch is my old place. The site this map is on is my old school, Moranbah East State School (MESS).
IE crashed again at this point. I'm rewriting the articles below for the third time
Underworldlive.com
Check out Underworld strang little webpage with random MP3s and movies. For some weird reason you need the Sun Java plug in to view most of it but the "Trousers" area includes links to the sounds you'll want.
Powderfinger
Powderfinger played Live At The Wireless this Monday and I missed it. It's repeated on Sunday 5pm on Triple J but I'll be jamming. Oh well. They're single came out on Monday (Like A Dog) and I'm not very impressed really. The song isn't very good (but I already knew that), being one of the worst of the album, and the two b-sides don't live up to the b-sides of 'My Happiness'. Sorry guys. Try again. How about a DVD?
A few days ago I posted that Powderfinger's 'Oddessey Number 5' was the second biggest selling CD of 2000 in Aus. Well, here is the ARIA chart for 2000 to proove it.
DVD
The Transformers The Movie DVD arrived on Tuesday and it's fantastic. The quality is brilliant compared to the video releases and it's the only DVD I've really noticed the quality difference on. Unfortunately it's not widescreen but apparently they couldn't find a good version for the DVD. The film they have chosen is very good with only a few scratches here and there. The interview with composer (Vince) was also very interesting, him explaining how he wrote most of the music for the movie from story cards and on finally seeing it wanted to change what he did... but loves the fans opinions of his music and admits that without the movie his career would be on a very big low at the moment.
A site definitely worth checking out is Michael's Region 4 DVD page, where he reviews, previews and discusses DVD in Australia. He also has a great page listing all the available DVDs in Aus and suggests which out of R1 and R4 (and sometimes R2) is the better to get and why (quality, features etc.) An awesome page.
I've recently bought (but yet to receive) Bjork's Volumen DVD with all here videos up to 'Hunter'. Unfortunately it doesn't include 'All Is Full Of Love' but this can still be bought as a DVD single from CDNow for $8 US. I'll have to get ordering I think...
My yet to be released but bloody should be DVD list?
* Wallace And Gromit Collection R4
* The Aardman Collection R4
* Orgasmo R4
* American Beauty Ultimate edition R4
* Terminator 2 Ultimate edition R4
* Terminator R4 (coming very soon)
* Snatch R4
* Faith No More video collection (including Richochet damn it!)
* Regurgitator video collection
* Powderfinger video collection
+ more to come
As you can see, my biggest frustration is DVDs that are available overseas in different regions but not here in Aus in Region 4 format.
And my favourite never to happen... somewhere on the web where I can select which music videos I want, have them all burned to a disc and sent to me for a reasonable price. And same for TV shows (a site to select X-Files episodes and have the burnt to DVD rather than having to buy the entire season would rule!)
Walken
Walken may be playing a gig at the Duke of Winsor Hotel cnr Chapel and High St somewhere between 4pm and 7pm on Saturday. Come on down and check us out if you get the chance. It's an open mic night and we don't know what will be provided but at the least we'll have a couple of acoustic guitars and maybe bass.
Approximate
Approximate is vaguely thinking of putting some effort in and producing himself a CD for sale over the net. The CD will definitely contain 'The 60kph Ton', 'Random', a new version of 'Forgive' (to get rid of the damn pops), a new version of 'Nth' and possibly some new tracks. Fun.