Saturday, May 21, 2011

Quality surely trumps convenience? Not so it seems...

Playlist
Matthew Florianz – Koude Handen
Matthew Florianz – Malbeek
Various – The Perfumed Garden
Emily Scott – Abcdefg Etc
Various – La Belle Epoque : EMI’s French Girls 1965-68
Brian Eno & David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Cloudland Blue Quartet – The Melville Set

Awoke around 4:30, with Meg the Black Cat purring loudly whilst relaxing upside down in an unfeasible position next to me – that’s one of the things cats are for I think...

Up at 5 or so and made a list of “things I’ve got on the go” – rather an inconsequential bunch of items, truth be told...

  • Update the Crispycat website...
  • Update the blog...
  • Reorganise the Jukeboxes...
  • Rip the pile of classical CDs which has been lying next to the PC for a couple of months now...
  • Rip the CDs borrowed three weeks ago from the library and which must be returned today...
  • Record and upload the set from Wednesday night’s performance...
  • Fix the downloading ability from the various CBQ album individual websites...
  • De-case the remainder of my self-burned CDs which have been piled up in the back room for a number of months now...
  • Put these CDs into plastic sleeves....

By the time I was sent to the Grocery Store for croissants around 10 am, I’d managed to update the blog and done some work on the Crispycat site...

Post breakfast and prior to leaving to drive into town to meet Dr Prog at the library, I’d managed to rip the library CDs to one of the hard drives (where they will no doubt languish until I’ve gone and said drive is chucked in a skip)...

Parked and walked to the library...



...almost 30 minutes late – but Dr Prog texted to advise he’d slept in and that he too was running late...

The racks of CDs-no-longer-able-to-be-loaned-out-for-some-reason-or-another seemed to have been replenished and so, whilst I didn’t borrow anything, at just sixty of your English one pence pieces each I picked up titles by Laura Nyro (2CD), Erasure (2CD), Emily Scott, TV21, Eno & Byrne and a compilation of French chanteuses from the mid sixties...

Dr Prog borrowed some unlistenable jazz by Evan Parker, whilst suggesting we both leave our collections to library in our wills...

I offered the opinion that, by the time we die, no-one will be listening to CDs or borrowing them from a library – that’ll be soooo early 21st Century old-school re listening options...

We walked back past the University...



...to the new premises of the Mosque Kitchen and enjoyed an economical tasty wee curry each and shot the breeze about prog rock etc etc, as we are wont to do...

To the Richmond Café for Turkish coffee...



...and more chat – where the Doc showed me his latest thing on his I Phone (he is a gadget guru) – Accu Radio...

You can choose from a large number of genre-based "stations" with no DJ chat and very little in the way of advertising...

This seems to fit in with my theory of the demise of physical listening content...

In 10 years (or less), people will pay £10 (or less) a month to listen to anything they want, streamed to their home system, mobile phone or mobile music device...

Godammit - and here’s me with over 6,000 Compact Discs cluttering up Crispycat Towers...

Mind you, although I will admit it's a good way of finding "new to you" music, I’m listening to their “Piano Jazz” station as I type - the sound quality might be fine for an I-Phone on the bus but it doesn’t really stand up to quality headphone style listening...

I am right and the rest of the world is, badly, wrong - surely convenience over quality does not make for a good situation...

And how on earth are artists going to make any money?

It's very difficult to find any accurate stats online as to just how much an artist receives per stream but it's rumoured that 1 million plays of "Poker Face" by Lady gaga on Spotify earned her the princely sum of $167...

Doesn't bode well for the earnings of artists getting even hundreds of thousands of plays, never mind tens of thousands...

Home and, with Anne watching the Scottish Cup Final (rather predictably, Celtic 3 Motherwell 0), I put the studio back together and recorded a facsimile of Wednesday night’s eight song performance, uploaded it to the cloud and added it to the CBQ Live website...



It’s just me, a mic and a guitar - all first takes – although I abandoned the idea of trying to recreate my witty between song banter – as it didn’t seem to be quite so witty in hindsight – I guess you had to be there...



Download This Set

In the evening, post a chat with Sister Pam - now into the second phase of her treatment and doing fine thus far, with no discernable side-effects and the Oncology Specialist liking her condition - your trio of Crispycat Towers inhabitants was entertained and sustained by “Dr Who”, another curry (Meg did not partake), “Have I Got News For You”, “Law & Order”, “The Likely Lads” film from 1976 and “Russell Howard Live in Brighton” prior to lights out...

Another fun-packed Saturday...

Highlight of the Day : Out with Dr Prog, in with the Exec Producer and Meg the Black Cat...

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