music

grahams’ completely normal radio programme goes public!

Posted on by grahams

For a bit more than 2 years I’ve been doing a mostly-weekly streaming internet radio show called “grahams’ completely normal radio programme“.  Since I kept it private amongst a small group of friends, while you may have heard me mention it on occasion, you most likely haven’t listened to it.  Starting this Monday at 10pm EDT, I’m taking the show public (and legit).  You can find the details to tune in over at http://radio.dosburros.com/ (which will redirect you to LoudCity).

The format is a commercial-free mish-mash of music I’m into, which crosses quite a few genres.  I’m live on mic, and have been known to have guests in-studio or over Skype.  I try to briefly review movies I have seen with the film club. I have real equipment. I have run contests. I have world premiered music. I usually manage to keep technical screw-ups to a minimum.  I even have a terrible auto-tuned theme song that will get stuck in your head.

As you may be thinking, having all of this going on for an audience of fewer than a dozen people started to seem a little ludicrous.  So I decided to figure out a way to conform to the complicated streaming royalty system, and ultimately settled on using the LoudCity platform so I didn’t have to do any hard work.  The only catch is that in order to be covered under their royalty agreements, I need to have all of the links to the stream hosted on their domain.  Which is why the above link will redirect you from dosburros.com to their site.

Obviously the programme’s web presence is limited right now.  I’ve been mulling this decision for a few months but the decision to actually pull the trigger and get it done happened while floating on the Party Barge Regency Edition this weekend.  In addition to the (currently) terrible webpage, you can follow the show on Twitter at @radioprogramme.

The people who have been listening for the past few years have told me it’s a good show.  I hope you’ll think so too.  Tune in one of these upcoming Mondays and let me know what you think.  At a minimum you’ll be able to make fun of me for such a colossal waste of time.

Brainwaves 2008

Posted on by grahams

I had buckets of fun at the first Brainwaves festival in 2006, and Brainwashed is turning it up to 11 for the second festival on November 21-23..  Big name acts you may have heard of like Meat Beat Manifesto, Matmos, and Stars of the Lid, but the real cream of the crop may be the bands you may not have heard of yet (unless you read Brainwashed religiously).   Brainwaves is completely different from any festival I’ve ever attended, the Regent Theatre is a pretty intimate venue and the artists are often sprinkled throughout the venue (not squirreled away in some green room or hotel). 

The schedule was just posted, and at 79 bucks, the three-day pass is a bargain..   You can also buy tickets for the individual days, so if you really want to help one of the greatest independent music sites online (and a native Boston business), buy your tickets now!

Ween!

Posted on by grahams
[info]adamfletcher

and I headed over to the Orpheum to see Ween last night..  Neither of us had ever caught the band live before despite listening to them for years, and it was totally awesome.  They rocked out for 2+ hours, no opener, to a packed house..  The Orpheum is a lousy venue, but they made the best of it…  The crowd was totally eating up the show, and the band rewarded them with a good mix of new stuff as well as classics…   I would have loved the nostalgic “Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese”, but you can’t always get what you want… :)

Live Music Fiesta

Posted on by grahams

For some reason after months of not really attending any shows regularly a bunch happened to occur all at once.  Of course, things were kicked off this Saturday past when

[info]coco_b

,

[info]adamfletcher

, and

[info]jeffm

and myself all had the extreme pleasure of seeing The Police at Fenway Park.  I was really excited about this show, but in the back of my head there was always this nagging fear that it would be a bunch of old guys who couldn’t quite play anymore pretending they were young again.  Beyond that, I generally avoid arena shows in favor of small clubs.  The odds of me seeing this band at a club are virtually nil, so I decided to make an exception to my rules…

As soon as they took the stage and kicked into Message in a Bottle, however, any fears were put right to bed.  They rocked so hard, it was such a great show, it has instantly jumped into the top 5 shows I have ever witnessed.  Their set list was great (I could have done without “Walking in Your Footsteps”, but you can’t please everyone), and hit just about every song I wanted to hear.  By the encore, I was thinking they were going to skip my favorite song, “Next to You”, but after the main encore they snuck back out on stage and kicked into it as their last song.  When they broke into it I probably jumped 3 feet out of pure excitement and adrenaline.  I actually for a split second considered trying to scalp tickets for Sunday’s show, but realized I’m not made of money.  =)

Last night I went out to Cambridge to see Negativland at the Middle East as part of their It’s All In Your Head FM tour..  It was also a great show, but in a completely different way.  The band was basically doing a live radio show from the stage, and if you’ve ever heard their Over the Edge radio show before, you know it can been a pretty crazy melange of samples, music, noise, and scripted weirdness.  They even handed out blindfolds at the ticket counter to enhance the “Radio Viewing” experience.  It was really enjoyable seeing these guys work, although by the 3rd hour of the show (as it approached midnight) I was getting pretty sleepy…

Tonight I’m returning to the Middle East and meeting up with a bunch of friends to see DJ Z-Trip.  His stuff can be real hit-or-miss for me, but his technical ability is simply astounding, so he at least possesses the chops to knock it out of the park.  I saw him a few years ago when he toured and it was a pretty enjoyable show, so hopefully he’ll pull it off again tonight.

Houses in Motion

Posted on by grahams

I finally spoke with

[info]coco_b

last night, she apologized profusely for leaving me in the dark for so long… She seems to be having fun out there in South Dakota, at least in her down time… Apparently it is very beautiful out there, we’ll have to get out there as part of our travels sometime soon.

I’ve been spending most of my time unpacking, cleaning, and settling into the new house. I use the term settling loosely, because I’m sure of my decisions will be overridden by Corinna when she gets back… =) Yesterday I managed to get the last of the boxes out of the living room, dining room, kitchen, and den, which allowed me to mop all the floors. The floors were refinished before we moved in, and whatever they used on the floor (stain or whatever) was getting onto socks and feet, so I had been walking around in flip-flops and sandals all the time.. But once I got the bulk of the crap unpacked, I was able to move everything around in order to mop. Now the floors don’t seem to scum up socks and feet, although they may need another mopping to be sure.

I bought a grill the other day, a propane Char-Broil… I had some people for grilling over on Saturday because

[info]luke0x

was in town briefly, and afterwards some of us went to the Middle East to see a band I had never heard of before, CSS. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you if it was a good show because I imbibed a bit too much and I think I would have enjoyed a Barry Manilow performance at that point… Seriously, though, it was a fun time,even if it wasn’t exactly my normal listening fare.

Sunday started off a little rough, but I eventually pulled it together… Unpacked a bit, but mostly I just lounged around the new house… It was strange, but I think because I’ve had a seemingly unending stream of projects in the months leading up to selling Corinna’s old place,simply sitting around watching TV caused me to feel guilty, like I was neglecting something which needed to be done immediately. Once I Reminded myself that the boxes would still be there the next day, and we weren’t in a race to get a house on the market or anything, I was able to just relax and enjoy Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon. Later on we caught Severance with the film club, which had a big turnout and was lots of fun, even if I was tired and hungover…

On Thursday I’m headed to the dreaded Avalon to see Skinny Puppy… I caught them last time they came through town, and it was a great show, so I’m hoping for even more fun!

Awesome (Extended) Weekend

Posted on by grahams

This weekend was all about entertainment and real estate. The Independent Film Festival of Boston is going on, and coco_b  and I hit up a bunch of screenings:

  • Fay Grim – This sequel to the 1997 film Henry Fool, which I have never seen, opened the festival. I really liked this film… Corinna and Audra have raved for a long time about HF, but I’ve never had a chance to see it. After seeing FG, it’s at the top of my Netflix queue. The story was well crafted, the characters were really interesting, and the actors did a fantastic job.
  • The King of Kong – A documentary about the Donkey Kong world record. Obviously, I had to see this film, but my expectations weren’t high. This might have been the best movie of the festival. The documentary was fantastically paced, the subjects were fascinating, and the film made the trivial consequences seem like the most important things in the world. I knew a bit about Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies through nerd osmosis, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine the dirty dealings and shenanigans… Even Corinna, who isn’t a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, loved this film.
  • Rabbit – A short film set in a kindergarten “learning to read” book, where all objects have their names printed next to them. It looked like illustrations from a Dick and Jane book, but with a far more surrealist premise. It was very enjoyable.

  • Fido – I really wanted to love this one.. The basic premise is this: A idyllic world, stuck in the 50s, where Zombies have been domesticated and are effectively pets/slaves to humans. And that sentence makes it sound like a winner, but it was an idea that just shouldn’t have been stretched to feature length. The movie was effectively Lassie but with a Zombie instead of a dog. Lassie episodes were only 30 minutes, this film was 90, and the stretching was evident. I really loved almost everything about this film; The concept, the characters, the acting, the cinematography, etc. was all great, it the story just couldn’t support a feature length film. I think this would have been an awesome 45 minute short…
  • Death Trike – A funny little short about a homicidal tricycle.  I don’t feel I need to elaborate much more..  Very fun…  From the director of Forest of the Dead.
  • Black Sheep  – Another huge highlight of the festival..  Genetically engineered sheep with a thirst for blood.  Very much in the spirit of Peter Jackson’s early films like Bad Taste and Dead Alive.  Very well paced, very funny, and properly gory.  Those Kiwis sure do know how to make a horror flick.
  • Monster Camp – I was afraid this documentary about Live Action Role-Playing (LARPing) would be a bit to exploitative..  I mean, I think LARPing is hilarious, but I laugh in private..  My fear for this film would be a theatre full of people laughing at the people dressed up as lizards..   But thankfully the film was very delicate and well crafted..  The filmmakers weren’t playing for laughs even if there were plenty of them in there, and when people were laughing, it didn’t seem cruel..  That could be because it was a theatre full of Boston-area nerds, though, so I’m not sure…  But I had the feeling that the subjects would have been able to laugh along with the crowd and not be terribly embarrassed..    It was a very fun film, and really provided insight into the LARPing scene..  I also think it made me a bit more sympathetic to LARPers in general…  I think playing helps many of these people in a similar way I think Computer Science House helps people;  A sort of “social primer” to help not-terribly-social people develop those skills they need in the real world.

To further Xtremeify this weekend of entertainment, Corinna and I went out to Providence on Saturday to see Stephen Lynch at Lupo’s.  Before the show, we met up with Omar, an old friend from the Rovia days…  He’s getting his Ph.D at Brown, but I hadn’t seen him in a few years, so we grabbed dinner and caught up a bit.  The show was fantastic!  Our seats were pretty good, and Lynch (who’s been on Broadway for a year as The Wedding Singer) was on his game completely…  He seemed to have really missed being on his own…  He had some verbal sparring with a heckler, but he seemed to have the upper hand..  It was a great show…  Unfortunately, Corinna’s mysterious food allergy reared it’s head again, but she took enough Benadryl to keep it somewhat in check in order to enjoy the show.  The Benadryl put her on her ass, though, so she slept the whole ride home and missed out on Black Sheep that night…  She woke up with the flu, so fate is apparently not smiling upon her.. =(

On Sunday, even though Corinna was feeling shitty, we managed to squeeze in 5 open houses…  Out of the 5, 3 weren’t even really worth considering, one was OK,but the last one turned out to be really cool.  We haven’t made an offer yet, we’re hoping to have a few more viewings in the next day or two before we make our decision, but we’re both rather excited about this place…