Yup, that’s right. I’ll be spending the next two weeks moving and getting ready for school, so I’m off the air until the start of the fall schedule. Her Jazz moves to Fridays at 7PM, after the Top Ten Show (which I’m hosting again).

Tonight I’ll be previewing forthcoming releases by Love Is All, Doug Gillard and more.

A couple of quick thoughts on the demise of Pandora and Muxtape… One’s a streaming suggestion service, the other’s a streaming personal mixtapes generated by user-uploaded tracks. Whether you agree with copyright laws, the impending royalty increases or not, the red flags were raised from the get-go. Apologies if this sounds jaded, but how could anyone be surprised by either?

Both services were curtailed so close together, so I’m stuck here thinking about other programs/services that allow people to discover music, and what choice actually means in the online world. Pandora promises discovery, but simply placates. You might walk away from the service with a song or artist that’s new to you, but it’s been channeled by whatever parameters a company musicologist may have assigned. So it’s “choice” based on the amount of times you’ve clicked thumbs up or thumbs down.

Muxtape attempts to mirror the intimacy of mixtape making. The workload is placed on the listener, and in the age of on demand everything [1], I’ve been pretty surprised by how the service has been embraced by folks. While the user might have more freedom in choosing whatever tape they want to listen to, the austere graphic interface of the site makes these tapes indistinguishable from one another, so the user is basing their choices off very little contextual information — so is a less informed choice actually a choice to begin with?

Maybe losing these services is a good thing, in a strange way, because it might provoke developers to design programs where the concept of choice is more fleshed out, and the final decision might actually rest in with the user. Didn’t Devo tell us we had a freedom of choice, or something like that?

[1] That’s a funny phrase, “on demand”, as if to suggest that we are entitled to all of this stuff.

My desk at work is not that exciting except for:

1. A platinum record given to us from Tommy Boy Records to commemorate the success of Naughty By Nature.

2. A 1986 SPIN Magazine award for WPRB’s excellence in keeping “it’s balance in the battle between free-form and format”.

3. Posters for No Age’s Nouns, Sonic Youth’s Goo, and Six Finger Satellite’s The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird.

4. A Quiet Riot promo photo. Come on, feel the noize!

Anyway, last week was our BMI logging. Though this is not so much a problem for me, I do make an effort to play stuff by independent bands (in the hopes they’ll get paid).

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One of the big projects I’ve been working on here at the station has been our Free Yr Radio event. Our concert with Secret Machines and DJ Dave P happens this Tuesday 8/12 at 6PM. It’s a free, all-ages event.

Full details can be found on the WPRB blog.

On Saturday 8/16, we’re sponsoring the Vivian Girls, CaUSE Co-MOTION!, Crystal Stilts, Home Blitz, FNU Ronnies event at Pilam. This is pretty much the show of the summer for me, and even if you don’t win tickets from the station, it’s only 5$.

Yup, it’s back. This month features interviews with No Age and The Breeders.

Pop Recon airs at 7-8PM ET on WPRB. If you miss it, the podcast version will go online in a week or so.

Things I remember about this show: talking about I find lobsters humorous, and that I enjoy yelling the phrase “CLAWS!” for no reason whatsoever. Yeah, I had a lot of fun on the air today!
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I love to check the spam filter. Here’s three I found particularly hilarious today, causing tears of laughter that could only be stopped after 5 minutes:

Subject: Jesus Christ To Star In Next Series Of Batman
Message: Polar Bear Finds Yoga Great For Flexibility, But Murder On The Balls

Subject: Release Of The Nancy Pelosi Sex Dvd Causes Mass Erectile Dysfunction In Us
Message: Old Man Dies Inside Paris Hilton

Subject: Madonnas Former Home Destroyed By Jesus
Message: Bush Down to 8 Friends on Myspace

As many of you know, I host the Top Ten show. When Pop Recon isn’t running, there’s a blank hour on the schedule that I fill with random music. Sometimes I’ll play records that are brand new to WPRB that week, sometimes I’ll do label tributes, etc. They’re not the best playlists, but it is a time for me to stretch out and do something fun that might not necessarily fit with Her Jazz. So enjoy.

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Leaving the office. July 24, 2008.

Technology is occasionally astounding. We are living in the age of Moore’s Law, indeed, and then some. It took me a year, one Hasselblad, lots of money and patience to do my Untitled Stills from New Jersey series. With one iPhone I can nearly replicate the same look and feel I was attempting to achieve.

Vacation, all I ever wanted! Yes, sometimes a little break can change things around for the better. I definitely felt back in the swing of things after. Big thanks to Mike Lupica (of WFMU) for coverin’ on my 7/10 show!

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