I’m a PC guy these days. That’s entirely a result of work-related compatibility issues and, since my retirement, budget and… well inertia I suppose.
But recent events got me reminiscing about my own introduction to personal computing. I was not a hugely early adapter to home computing, other than a brief foray into the world of the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a (a Commodore 64 contemporary I think)… but somewhere around the mid 90’s I discovered digital MIDI-based musical instruments, particularly drums and keyboards. Now I could play drums in an apartment! Exciting stuff for a guy who’d sold his soul drum kit in 1977 to go to computer programming school…
Anyway, I soon reached the limits of the built-in sequencer on my TD-7 drum unit, and I asked the guy at Saved By Technology, where I bought the MIDI gear, to advise me on a bigger sequencer. He suggested I just buy a computer, or I’d soon be frustrated by the inherent limitations of any hardware-based sequencer.
So I asked around amongst my colleagues, mainframe computer types like me: “Mac or PC?”
This would be somewhere around Win 95 / OS 7.1 era… Lots of hoopla about Win95… The few people at work with PC’s (most of us were on so-called “dumb terminals” ) were still on Win 3.1. I remember finding it quite interesting that while 2 out of 3 recommended the PC, anyone who had used both types would recommend the Mac. Mind you, none of them were doing MIDI sequencing, so in the end, the Saved By Technology guy’s recommendation carried the most weight, and soon I had my very own Power Mac 7100.
Almost all of what would eventually become my first (and probably only) officially-released CD was written and recorded within a few months of getting up and running on that machine, and getting my gear working with it.
While the whole Mac or PC debate has these days become tiresome and about as interesting as “Coke vs Pepsi”, I did go through a period of Mac evangelism in the Nineties, as a result of my early success and enthusiasm on that platform.
Here’s a novel little ditty that draws heavily from clips taken from the Fawlty Towers TV show, starring (both the show and this song) John Cleese. I did not include it on the CD so as to avoid running afoul of the copyright police. So mum’s the word. Or tell the world. Either way. I can take it down from here fairly quickly if it comes to that…
I post it now, because it came up in conversation, in the context of “my brain hurts” as a reaction to the rampant cognitive dissonance and, something I learned just today, the widespread Dunning-Kruger Effect in the public discourse these days…
When I first put this album out there in the world, I decided it might be fun to set up a Google alert for it, to see if there was anything going on I should know about… I’d never alerted myself to anything in this way, so I didn’t really know what to expect. And at first, there was nothing, just alerts to whatever I’d posted myself. No surprise there.
But then one day, a few months ago, after the album had been on iTunes and CD Baby for a while, I started getting hits for it on various peer-to-peer download sites. Now I’m no stranger to just downloading stuff I may or may not have the moral right to download, so I’m not going to get all up on my high horse about it. And it’s not like sales were affected. But this was peculiar.
And since that day, EVERY SINGLE DAY, it shows up in my alerts. Some new fly-by-night site with a spammy domain name originating in China or Russia or some other exotic land, where the music is free but the malware and identity theft will cost you big time…
I’m of the opinion that these pirate sites had somehow “scraped” the content from one of the legitimate places out there where I had placed the album. Meaning their security is compromised. I just don’t think it was some fan who ripped it and uploaded it. The listing on the pirate sites is PRECISELY the same as it appears on CD Baby. Word for word, including the cover art.
So I give up Internet. You win. Take my life. Please.
Here is the whole album, presented as a widgetized playlist from Grooveshark.com, where I have, as the actual owner of the content, legitimately uploaded it. Requires Flash. For the Flash-challenged (iPad users for example) I can’t help you at this time. Buy the CD maybe? Just a thought… B-)
Tomorrow evening, Thursday June 17, 2010, I am grateful to be included in this week’s installment of The Hundred Mile Music Show on 560 CFOS radio in Owen Sound.
The Hundred Mile Music Show
The concept for the show takes its inspiration from the so-called “hundred mile diet”, which espouses the virtues of eating food grown within 100 miles of your home. So the show features artists living within that radius of Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. Which happens to be where I live these days.
Here’s a novel little ditty that draws heavily from clips taken from the Fawlty Towers TV show, starring (both the show and this song) John Cleese. I did not include it on the CD so as to avoid running afoul of the copyright police. So mum’s the word. Or tell the world. Either way. I can take it down from here fairly quickly if it comes to that…