As an aside, I occasionally get email asking where the audio archives of my radio show went. Well, I took them down for liability reasons. I'm still archiving them; I just can't make them downloadable. If you're really interested, feel free to email me and we can work something out - maybe I'll burn a CD or DVD of archived shows in mp3 format and mail them out at cost.
I've started archiving my radio shows again; you can download the torrents here. You will need a BitTorrent client.
When I switched machines that run this site, a whole lot of links got broken, especially the ones to the audio files. I never got around to fixing them (and still haven't) but I have bittorrented almost all of the DJ sets that I had hosted. You can access them from the tracker web page. If I get ambitious, I'll fix the old links to point to the new torrents, but I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.
Bandwidth is rate limited; this is a machine sitting on my home connection. That's half the reason I switched to BitTorrent instead of allowing people to download the raw mp3 files - it lets me mooch off of your bandwidth as well. Right now the setting are such that at most, only four of the torrents can be seeded simultaneously; I may adjust that up or down depending on how much traffic I end up seeing.
I finally got around to encoding the interview I did with Grand Buffet a couple of weeks back. I botched the beginning of the recording, so it fades in in the middle of something that Jarrod (aka Lord Grunge) was saying. It's a pretty funny interview - they're not very serious most of the time - but I got some good answers out of them.
Download (28.8 MB) (right-click or option-click to save, don't stream; please use a download manager if your browser doesn't already resume automatically)
While I'm waiting to hear back from Frank, I'll put up a link to the latest song to embed itself in my head irrevocably. That track is "Van Nuys (Es Very Nice)" by Los Abandoned. Los Abandoned is an outfit from the L.A. area that is just bursting onto the scene. They've got a unique style, largely resulting from the blending of pop-punk and Latino influences. This particular track is tremendously bubblegummy, but they've got some darker and harder stuff as well, although everything is rounded off a little bit at the edges by the dulcet voice of Lady P. They have a few additional songs for download at their website, so be sure to check it out!
Update: Just in case you're not paying attention, I'll be removing the link in a week or so. Standard policy for audio blogs.
A couple of weeks ago Amar put up a very interesting post about the intersection of video games with hip-hop culture and music over at a new group blog that he's starting up with some other folks. In response, I thought I'd point out a couple of other tracks that also use some video game samples. I'll be deleting the audio files in about a week, so download them while you can.
Saafir, "Smart Bomb," Qwest Records 1996
This track was first released on a promo 12" for the album "The Hit List" which didn't actually end up getting released until 1999. It uses a ridiculous number of video game samples - I've never been able to identify them all. This was probably the last track Saafir put out that I really loved.
Scram Jones, "64 Bit," Sure Shot Recordings 2005
Scram Jones is a new up-and-coming producer/DJ/MC and this new track off his EP "Loose Cannons" takes a portion of the theme to one of the Super Mario Bros. games (number 3, maybe?) and explodes it. He's been featured as a guest on a few tracks in the last year, but it looks like he's finally making his move to get his name out there.
I'm not entirely sure that this is really a major development in hip-hop; rather I think that the concept of hip-hop has always been that producers have sampled sounds from popular sources. First it was disco, funk, and jazz; then it was film, and then producers started reaching for more obscure sources, yet still recognizable to many people. Video games have now thoroughly permeated their way through pop culture - everybody can recognize Super Mario Brothers, or Zelda, or Metroid. They are a part of the zeitgeist; an indelible anchor in the minds of the youth. It is only natural that they would be incorporated into hip-hop.
It occured to me that I hadn't actually updated the archived sets in a while. Three months, in fact. Well, here they are - the ones that got recorded properly, anyway. Right-click or whatever to download. Remember, please use a download manager - bandwidth is limited and I've been having a lot of service outages lately.
Here are the archived sets of the Vinyl Frontier for the month of August.
Here are the archived sets from the last couple of months. I was pretty sporadic about recording the sets, so there are only four. Be sure to check the one with Baby Cee, his old school set was pretty good.
Here are the archived sets for May 2004. I had a technical glitch on the 11th, so that set is not archived. Please remember to use a download manager, as I have limited bandwidth.
Here are the archived sets of the Vinyl Frontier from April 2004. Remember, please use a download manager as this server is sitting on my cable modem which has been somewhat flaky of late.
Here are the archived sets for the month of March 2004. Some of the sets are truncated due to technical issues, others due to baseball.
I was lucky enough to get to do an interview with Lederhosen Lucil, DJ Jester the Filipino Fist, and Krista Muir of Hypo Records for KTRU. I leave it to the astute music aficionado (I just checked right now, apparently afficionado is also an allowable spelling) to discern why the previous sentence is odd.
Their take on music downloads was in some ways completely different than that generally espoused by the Reputation. Neither viewpoint can be said to be without its pros and cons, so for now I will leave the subject alone. I have my own definite views on where intellectual property needs to head to allow the production of art to continue to be a viable method of making a living, but that's a rant for a different time.
Anyway, they were fun to interview, and played a great show at the Proletariat later in the evening. DJ Jester started off his set with the instrumental version of Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" and it only got better from there. The crowd was a little dead, though - I tried to get people dancing, but I think indie rock hipster kids don't actually know how to dance. Lucil dealt with a fairly rowdy crowd quite adeptly - she's got some snappy comebacks in her arsenal! Hopefully they will all get a chance to come back to Houston.
Anyway, here's the interview (64kbps stereo mp3 format):
On Friday, I was able to get a hold of the band The Reputation and two of the members agreed to come by the KTRU studio for a short interview. They were in Austin on Thursday night playing at the Lookout! Records showcase at SXSW, and played in Houston on Friday night.
Joel and Sean were kind enough to stop by and chat with me, and here's the recording of the interview (posted with the permission of the band). I apologize for the weird audio artifacts, my computer is acting up again. I have downsampled the audio to 56 kbps stereo, so even if the audio artifacts weren't there, it wouldn't be CD quality audio...
Please download the mp3 to your computer; I don't have enough bandwidth to do live streaming.
Both Lookout! and Initial have given me the OK, so the link is back. Full interview, with songs:
This one is a shorter version without the songs (Either Coast, Face It, This Town). Face It is available as a downloadable mp3 from the Lookout! Records website, and Either Coast and This Town used to be streamable from a flash app on the Reputation's site. That seems to be gone, though. Maybe it'll make a reappearance...
Here are the archives of the Vinyl Frontier for the month of February.
Here are the last couple months worth of archives. There are a few missing shows as a result of technical difficulties (mostly computer malfunctions). Remember, please download (don't stream) and please use a download manager - I have to rate limit the bandwidth; it will take some time to download these sets (they're all about three hours of audio).
Finally getting around to posting these archived sets from the Vinyl Frontier. Right-click, ctrl-click, option-click, whatever it is for your particular browser to download. I would also suggest using a download manager.
I have also finally put up the archive of the interview I did on KPFT with Craig Lindsey of the Houston Press.
Here are the archives of the Vinyl Frontier for the month of October. Please download them to your own computer (right-click, or whatever the hell is appropriate for your browser/OS combination) instead of streaming them.
Here are some of the archives of the Vinyl Frontier that haven't gone up yet. Right-click (or option-click, or whatever it is) to download. And please download. I have a feeling that some people are streaming the audio to WinAMP or whatever program they use to listen. It's killing my bandwidth.
I have a backlog of archived sets to put up. This will probably bring my server to its knees.
Playlists are available for these sets, if you haven't figured that out already.
Here's a little something to entertain you. I call it "Esta é verão;" if anyone out there is fluent in Portuguese, please let me know if I messed that up. It should translate to 'this [music] is summer'. Normally I think you would have the gender agreement between este and verão, but since 'this' is actually referring to the music (la música), I chose the other gender.
Anyway, this is my entry into the Scion/URB Magazine DJ contest. It's not bad, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to win. Kind of hacked it together at the last minute. But it does make you want to spend an evening on a tropical beach...
Update [23 July 2003]: By request, here's the tracklisting.
Here is the last batch of archived sets.
I've finally got the last few weeks worth of shows encoded, so here they are.
Still working on reformatting the stupid punchout photo blocks. I don't have easy access to IE/Win, though. All of the Mac browsers I've tested so far work correctly. Stupid Windows.