Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for August 13 2015 – Hip Hop Family Home

In this episode, I play a song by Five Eight; I update progress on my weight loss; I give my final word on the “end of days” debate with Steve Webb; I talk about WREK, the Beatbox, Jerald Dotson and being one of the few white kids at early rap shows; I let the cat out of the bag prematurely for a project I haven’t even started yet.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, August 13, 2015

Links mentioned in this episode:

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for August 27, 2013 – “My Life In Fandom #24”

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast on August 27, 2013.

I talk about Reality Break, the radio interview show I did first for WREK and later on the public radio satellite system thanks to KRVS FM in Lafayette LA. I tell the whole story, starting from 1992 through my various changes of locale and ways of preparing the show, all the way through to the end in 1998.

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

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Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for August 16, 2013 – “My Life In Fandom #14”

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, August 16, 2013.

In this episode, I focus on the Castlegate hotel and the various fun times I had there, from skeezy record shows to Dixie Trek, Phenomicon and graduation parties.

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for September 27, 2009 – “Goodbye Thomas Peake”

Here is the direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for September 27, 2009. I play a song from Fugazi; the bulk of this show is an extended eulogy to the late great Thomas Peake; I play a song by my friends in Stovall and try not to weep my way out.

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Around the Podosphere

Here’s some random things I’ve been listening to.

My close personal acquaintance Mary Robinette Kowal put up a reading on her site of her short story “Evil Robot Monkey.” I both liked the story and liked her reading of it. I’d love to one day have a chance to spend a little more time with her.

I’ll admit that I’m on the verge of becoming something like an Amory Lovins fanboy. I call him “Amory McLovin” just for fun. This morning I listened to his presentation about how businesses can save energy and turn a profit on doing it. I heard his previous series talking about changing house designs so that they use less energy in ways that are cheaper to build. His story involved guys repeatedly asking him what the payback time was and not hearing him say “Dude, this design is cheaper than the standard!” I’ll listen to any presentation of his that goes online.

Cyberpunk Radio continues to be the consistently weirdest thing in my podcast listening queue. That’s why it stays in there. I have no idea how many people listen to this show, but he’s been plugging at it for years and years. It’s highly creative and in its own way the truest show I listen to. This show sounds like living in 2008 feels. I recommend you check it out.

I love poker – playing poker, listening to shows about poker and watching poker on TV. I listen to Poker Road Radio, which I like but spends a lot of time on the cults of personality and the “poker lifestyle” kind of stuff. I really don’t give a damn about which players have the nicest Rolexes or Bentleys. I care about the game, how to play and how to improve my play. That makes the new show in the Poker Road family – All Strategy – perfect for me. It really is what the title says. Daniel Negreanu and Justin Bonomo discuss the strategy of playing poker without all the nonsense. I’ve heard the first two episodes, another was published today and it has already climbed high up my list of favorite podcasts.

Tonight I listened to the Eyedrum Show podcast, hosted by my friend Chris. At the beginning he mentioned that this episode was the second to last one. He said he’d talk more about that later but unless I missed it he never came back to that story. I don’t know what is precipitating this, but if forced to guess it would be burnout. Chris has been hosting this WREK Sunday Special about Eyedrum every month for the last 4, 5 maybe more years. I enjoy listening to it but I can understand why it would make sense to stop.

Around the Podosphere

Here’s some stuff I have recently heard and liked in the podcast world.

I cite Gerry Spence frequently, and mention his book How to Argue & Win Every Time in the podcast a lot. Recently I heard him talk about his new book Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power: The Rise and Risks of the New Conservative Hate Culture on the Authors on Tour podcast. It was a very good talk, and he said a lot of the things I wish I was hearing from progressive politicians about how the concentration of broadcasting media power in a few hands undermines democracy. He mentioned how he can’t get on TV for this book and is worried his message won’t get out, but sir I heard you without any intervention of major media. If I start feeling my oats, I might even see if I can get him for an interview. I do recommend this episode.

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Irrational Public Radio is downright hilarious. I’m a little surprised it has been going on for so long without me ever hearing about it. It rings so true with me because it completely reinforces the things that have been bugging me about NPR lately. I’ve been meaning to write a post about it but I haven’t gotten around to it. If you listen to these shows, a lot of what I meant to say is captured in this pitch perfect parody.

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My friend Chris mentioned in comments to a post here that the April episode of WREK’s Eyedrum Sunday Special was especially good. I listened to it today and agree with him. There is a chunk in there of live Peter Brötzmann that sounded fantastic to me. It put me in mind of Bitches Brew/Agharta era Miles Davis, with that African influenced screaming jazz with a funky underlayer. It did indeed rock.

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William Shunn is about to wrap up his serialized podcast of his memoir The Accidental Terrorist. I’ve been waiting for the book for 10 years, since he mentioned it on GEnie long ago. I highly recommend that people go back, grab all 40 or so episodes of the show and listen to the whole thing. It took me (and him!) a year to get through it, but you can do it in a week now. I guarantee it will be worth your time or triple your money back.

Friends of WREK Blog

Bad things are afoot in Atlanta. Various factions are trying to take over some or all of the programming on WREK, the Georgia Tech student station. I’ve glancingly mentioned Georgia Public Broadcasting’s attempt to air the commodity NPR programming over WREK’s signal during weekdays. The GT Athletic Association, which cares nothing about radio except for those times when they have a game to air, also wants to exert some form of greater control. I haven’t gotten wildly involved in defending WREK this time. I’ve fought lots of these fights and I’m just weary. I support them in principle and although I was not a signatory to the recent letter to the administration that’s just from my failing to respond to email. I will probably write my own letter soon.

An alumnus named John Nestor has set up a blog about the whole issue if you want to follow these events and/or help out.

This American Life Doesn’t Get It

Jon Udell posts this very disappointing exchange between himself and the webmaster at This American Life. In a nutshell, TAL is asserting that Jon is violating their copyright by publishing an RSS feed that points to MP3s that they themselves host. This is exactly the same thing I’m doing with the WREK feeds I host. In my case, I have a close relationship with WREK (they recently put me and several alumni on a plaque honoring our service to the stations) so I can’t see them doing the same thing to me.

I wish WBEZ was still my local affiliate to which I was a donor. I’d write them a note of disappointment as a member. I will still write that note, but with a more tenuous relationship. Public radio wants to be perceived as different than commercial radio. If that’s their desire, getting legal and cease-and-desistish on people for linking back to their own files is the wrong way to do it. It’s absurd on a technical level, and dickheaded on a common sense and moral level. I’m slowly ceasing to think of the organization as “public radio” (in the sense of us all being in it together) and instead thinking them as another form of “corporate radio” (where the corporation is the CPB).

Really, who needs that anymore? I’ve been a deep supporter of and even a participant in public radio as an independent producer in my life, and even I am becoming an antagonist of them. Folks, when you are antagonistic to your supporters you create antagonism. As Colbert says, “You are (this close to being) dead to me.”

Thanks to EGC reader/listener Ken for the heads up on this issue.

Update: Now they’ve even asked him to take down the blog post cited above talking about the takedown notice. To me, that just compounds the cluelessness further and works me into more of a lather than I originally had. When I send them my email, I will post the text as a blog post.

Personality Crisis does Queen

I’m listening to the most recent episode of Personality Crisis from my outlaw RSS podcast feed. Queen is playing (played?) Atlanta this week, so Jon did a show with a lot of Queen (still going, so I don’t know if all 2 hours were nothing but.) This is seriously good stuff, not the tired things like “Bohemian Rhapsody” that you’ve heard 17,000 times on classic rock radio. Think “Tie Your Mother Down”, “Ogre Battle”, “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon/I’m In Love with My Car”, etc. I think I’d put Queen at the very top of 70’s bands that I care about, or possibly tied with Cheap Trick. Although there are half a dozen songs that get played over and over on radio, it’s easy to forget that there are so many good albums loaded with good songs top to bottom.

If you want to hear this, you have until Sunday night March 12, 2006 when it gets overwritten in the archive by the next show.

Outlaw WREK Feeds

Here’s a quick list of all the outlaw, unofficial podcast feeds I have set up for WREK programs.

Personality Crisis; punk, post-punk and what have you: feed

Subgenius mayhem; the Hour of Slack and Bob’s Slacktime Funhouse: feed

Desoto Hour; big band jazz (at 90 minutes not really an hour): feed

Atmospherics; ambient and electronic: feed

Longboards and Longhorns; surf, country, hawaiian, and western soundtracks: feed

Classics; ancient and modern: feed

New Forces; garage and psychedelic rock: feed

Update: I forgot to mention that all of these feeds include the trailing half-hour beyond the nominal endpoint of the show. Because WREKsters are, ummm, non-rigorous with the clock often shows start late and run over by amounts that range from a minute or two up to and including the point where it seems ridiculous. Any given episode of any of these shows may have some of the preceding show in the first part and run into the following show on the back half.

Also, by popular demand I have added feeds for the daily Classics show and for New Forces. OK, one guy apiece asked for them but sometimes that’s all it takes.

EGC Clambake for October 21, 2005

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for October 21, 2005.

I play a clip from the Barack Obama podcast; I play a song by the Siderunners; the Marjane Satrapi video interview is up; I used Virtual Dub and Deshaker to clean up the video; I lay out my term for the DIY lifestyle; I play another Siderunners song; WREK has a new show I love called “Longboards and Longhorns”;

This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at iPod Observer and Reel Reviews! Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package.

This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0.

Links mentioned in this episode:

PlayPlay

Eyedrum Podcast

My friend and WREK cohort Chris emailed me about his new project. He has been a volunteer at the Atlanta art gallery/ performance space Eyedrum for a while. Once a month on WREK he hosts a Sunday Special that features songs from performances at the joint. Now he has set up a podcast for those shows. Cool, no? This is yet another semi-official podcast feed for WREK, on top of the ones I set up. It’s not exactly “if you build it they will come” but more like “if you build it, they will build it too.”

ELO

My cable modem took a dump, so I relocated to the branch office temporarily. I’m sitting here working, eating a crab melt panini and listening to last week’s Personality Crisis from WREK. Jon is currently playing a chunk of songs that are ELO and ELO covers. Just like the Paul Melancon song “Jeff Lynne” reminds me, I have an enormous store of affection for the Electric Light Orchestra (and also the Move, the predecessor band.) Even at their bullshit schmaltziest, I still love everything from the early 70’s up to the mid-80’s. By the time of “Horace Wimp” the cause was lost, but there are so many of those tunes that just take me back and fire me up. “Living Thing,” “Turn to Stone,” “Evil Woman,” and one of my all-time favorite rock tunes “Do Ya” are guaranteed to bring a smile to my face and a tap to my toes. Even though later I got deep into the worlds of punk and metal, that never subtracted music, only added. At my thrashiest, moshiest point in my music fandom, I was still a sucker for “Can’t Get It Out of My Head.” Thanks for reminding me, brother. I heart Jon Kincaid.

PS – You can subscribe to the ghetto podcast feed I set up for the show. If you use iTunes, be sure an tell it to get all files, because there are five separate ones every time the show posts as it is in 30 minute chunks.

Subgenius Feed

As a reminder to all of you who are in to remix/mashup culture, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for the grandaddy of them all, the Subgenius Hour of Slack, plus the local Atlanta show Bob’s Slacktime Funhouse. If you subscribe now, you’ll get HOS #999 (which is the number of Bob), and shortly get the big one, episode #1000. WREK FM, being full of the spirit of slack themselves, are a few weeks behind the broadcast schedule of most of the Subgenius world so if you missed it, here it is.

Clambake Episode for June 9, 2005

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for June 9, 2005.

I talk about being low energy; I have a VOIP box in my house, named “the Batphone”; I play a song from Chub Creek about how poor I am at answering email; I talk about passing on the Spoleto festival; I play a clip from Echo Radio; I play an “evil genius” song from Jonathan Coulton; I give Adam from the MacCast static about his trepidation for taking ads; I mention the Rob Glaser streaming deal; and finally I play a hilariously raunchy song by Jonathan Coulton.

This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at iPodderX! Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package.

This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0.

Links mentioned in this episode:

PlayPlay

Rob Glaser on RealAudio

I listened to the Larry Magid interview with Rob Glaser of Real. They were talking about the tenth anniversary of streaming RealAudio. I’m pretty sure I heard Glaser claim that they were the first to do it, which is patently false. Both WREK in Atlanta and WXYC in Chapel Hill were streaming 6 months before the time Glaser cites as their “origin date”.

I used to think that WREK had a claim for being first to stream as they were both on the same day but now I believe they have ceded that claim as WXYC was released to the public the day WREK went beta. So, WXYC was first but WREK gets the geek points. WXYC was using off the shelf packages and had help from Sunsite while WREK’s client, server and protocol (CyberRadio1) were written by the guy who was the general manager of the station, a guy named John Selbie.

Regardless of all that, a lot of people were streaming before the time Glaser claims that Real originated audio streaming.