thisCassandra

HOT DRM, BOOHOO

Rupert (the MP3 player, purchased in May 07) came with a promotion from boohoomusic.ca (corporate names have been changed) - 30 free songs if I joined up, free to keep regardless, and I joined. My 30 free songs consisted of pop stuff. It was easy.

I also purchased and downloaded a bunch of songs direct from artists' sites, Creative Commons stuff (no DRM), and uploaded a bunch of albums (5 or so) from my personal CD collection to Jackson Institute (the computer).

I was travelling (LA, San Diego, train home), ten days away from home. About halfway into the train ride home, most of the music wouldn't play. The message was that Boohoo wouldn't let me play the music unless I did the Jackson Institute - Rupert sync weekly. In effect Boohoo had taken some weird ownership of all the music, which I found quite annoying, so I quit Boohoo as soon as I arrived home.

Led by one of the hipper flatmates, I found eh-music, a site that sells obscure-ish music with no DRM, which I joined. I took out a monthly subscription, and I have been happily downloading obscure-ish, unprotected music from them ever since. I have also been happily uploading music from my personal CD collection, and had 20 or so CDs in the library. 

My eh-music refresh date is the 24th of each month. For my April download I was a bit late, waiting until about the 10th of May. After I downloaded my new songs to Jackson Institute, I hooked up Rupert II (the third of the MP3 players - it's a long story) which sent the message that it had 1.9 GB remaining, and then the sync started. Something glitched and when the image came back the message read that Rupert II had 4.6 GB remaining; somewhere along the way 2.7 GB of files, all music, had gone missing.

I checked on Rupert II, and the music that was not from eh-music, that is the Boohoo songs and the uploads from the personal CD collection (20 or so CDs), were gone. I checked Jackson Institute, and they were gone from there too. Somehow, everything that had DRM had disappeared without leaving any traces. It was as though they had never been there.

My first I thought was that I might have deleted the tracks, but when I thought it through I remembered that my memory, though growing weaker, has (historically) been very strong; I can remember conversations verbatim, I can remember what people wore and the circumstances surrounding situations, I can remember birthdates and phone numbers, I can remember a lot of stuff in fine detail. My memory is a bit like a two year old hard drive, normally reliable, but a bit flaky. That said, it's not nearly flaky enough that I could delete 2.7 GB of files, all music, and not recall having done so.

Coincidentally, the hard drive (on the two year old computer) has been misbehaving a bit lately, crashing for no reason (clicking on the inbox in gmail), but it is no Hal 9000 (I have been careful not to download any recordings of "Bicycle Built for Two) and it is not yet misbehaved enough that it could/would selectively delete 2.7 GB of files, all music. So what could have happened to that 2.7 GB of files, all music? 

I suspect boohoomusic.ca came after me on the one year anniversary date and deleted all the music files that had any DRM on them. I can't prove this, but what else might it be?

Bruce Is No Poofter

I went to a tea party this afternoon, tea and wee sandwiches, cheese and crackers, cookies and other dainties to celebrate the 50th of my friend Pat. Pat lives in the huge and funky  co-op apartment I lived in before moving to thisCastle, and most of the guests were other residents of the building. Pat is a good neighbour.

Pat is a printmaker, and works out of a co-op studio on Granville Island. Several of the other printmakers from studio were also invited, and Barb (with her guy Bruce) was the first of them to arrive. The first thing she said was "I just shook the hand of Bruce Springsteen," and went on to tell us that she'd been down at the studio and he'd come in and they'd chatted, and that the previous time he'd come to town he'd bought one of her prints. She was thrilled, and we were too, with her brush with fame.

Sometime during the party, the phone rang and Pat took it in the other room. After about a minute she brought it back out and handed it to Barb who looked mystified. Soon she looked and sounded very excited: it was Wayne, Bruce Springsteen's manager, telling her that he'd arranged comps for her and to pick them up at the box office.

Apparently the Boss had asked her if she'd had a chance to get tickets, and she'd said something about being a poor artist, and he'd said something about her calling his manager to organize comps, but rather than leaving it to her being able to track down the manager, he'd got his manager to track her down. The manager had called the studio looking for her, and someone there had been able to give him Pat's phone number.

What Wayne said to Pat "This is a call about someone who met someone else earlier this afternoon," and any of us would have known who the two people were.   

Barb was excited and so was everyone else. It was exciting even being there when it happened. Also, how great is it that he (the Boss) could so easily be arrogant, and yet he is  nice enough to do something that would mean so much to someone else.

I don't have any Springsteen in my collection. Maybe I should get some.

Hey, if I keep print-making, maybe something exciting like this will happen to me someday.

thisWeekend: Old Things and New

Saturday evening: My friend Marlene, Marlene's folks, my mother, my friend Amy and I went for dinner at the Keg. Because of the parents we went to the Keg, but we all enjoyed the food tremendously,

Marlene bought me a housewarming gift, a small barbecue (Weber Baby Q) to go on my renovated roof. It can use any of the sizes of propane tanks, which is good because I bet I wouldn't want to carry a full big tank up there. I sometimes think it would be worthwhile to run a natural gas line up there.

Sunday afternoon: Amy (the other Amy) and I went to Jazz Vespers for the first time. We went for the music, and didn't expect there to be so much worship stuff, but the music was good and the worship stuff was liberal and okay, as far as that worship stuff goes, so it was pretty good. St Andrew's is, after all, a big liberal Anglican church in the West End, a notoriously gay part of downtown, so no fire and brimstone nor talk of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Amy and I have only seen each other once since meeting up in San Diego and going to Tijuana together. She gave me a (full) Warp mints tin (her brother owns the factory that makes them) that I do not yet have.

Sunday evening: I went to Richard's on Richards (notorious mixed meat market) to see Blank & Jones (trance/electronic musicians) with my friend Angelo (trance dj) and his friends. I haven't been in that place since Feb 14th 1989. Back then it was Graceland (before that it was the Gandy Dancer, a notorious boys only meat market). That day I took Robert to see Tackhead, Adrian Sherwood's industrial dub group. The music was not so different on these two nights.

There was a big difference between the young women of 1989 and those present last evening. Those last evening were like mermaids on the prows of ships, proudly leading with their breasts, nudging people out of their ways. The breasts which pushed against me were hard and unforgiving. Being assertive, I pushed back which got me hostile looks from the overly made up faces attached to the overly pumped up breasts (55 psi at least).

When I led with my foot after one had pushed me out of her way while walking past me on the dance floor, I knew it was time to go home, so I left.

Monday: I have a coffee date with Robert, an old boyfriend.

Edit: The Monday coffee date is now a Wednesday dinner date.

Folk Fest 2007 2

This year's Folk Fest discovery is the Wailin' Jennys, the Folk Fest moment belonged to the end of the set when they sang Jane Siberry's tune "Calling All Angels", and it was extraordinary in the best possible way.

It's beautiful. You can enjoy the version they sang on A Prairie Home Companion last July here: A Prairie Home Companion, July 1, 2006.

I saw Sherry, my shrink from group therapy. She and her family were meeting up with people who had sat beside us. She looks very well, and asked me how I was doing, if I was doing well. It was nice of her to ask. I was glad to see her.

When I saw her I was sitting with Amy and one of her friends, so Sherry got to see me with others.

Later, outside the fence I saw one of the women who was a member of the group when I quit.
She looks well.

I'd been discussing the day before that I might go back for therapy, but not group, not now. I tend to fade into the background and let the other group members take most of the space because I think they need more than I do.

I see myself as being able to handle stuff better than the others, or I think I should be able to handle stuff.

One of the wonderful things about attending the Folk Festival is seeing people you don't see very often. For the past two days I've been seeing lots of those cared-for-but-peripheral people, and lots of them have been seeing me.

Anthems of My Life

The early 70s:

School's Out - Just because.

The late 70s:

Born to Run - Speaks to my rebellious nature.

The early 80s:

The Goldberg Variations - I spent a few years in there listening only to this piece played by Glenn Gould. I recognize it with one note. Pretty much any of them. In the late 80s, Robert, my then sweetheart, made a tape of this for me, punning on the title and the artist name, writing "The Gouldberg Variations" on the label.

The late 80s:

Jump - Robert, my then sweetheart, took an outgoing message cassette, 5 minutes per side, and recorded one Van Halen song per side. He made the obvious pun, and presented his gift to me. One of the songs was Jump, the other was Dance the Night Away. I preferred Jump; there's something oddly uplifting hearing Eddie Van Halen playing synthesizer;

Where the Streets Have No Name - It just is;

Synchronicity II - much to the credit of the video, the boys in B&W on the pirate ship with wind blowing around them;

90s:

Famous Blue Raincoat - I came to Leonard Cohen by way of Jennifer Warnes, during a road trip with Mo [from Montreal (where we lived) to Toronto (to see JP, Mo's best friend)]. JP had this LP, and played it for us the first evening we were there. Mo and I were in the middle of our courtship which was quite long and quite innocent. Quite soon after our trip to Toronto, Rob-Bob (who was my ex at that time, but this was not the terminal ex-hood that he has now) came to Montreal on his way back from Europe, and I told Mo that I had to see Rob-Bob and check out where we stood feelings-wise. To cut to the chase, Rob-Bob and I got back together again, and Mo was nice about it.

When Mo and I had been hanging out, Mo was proudly on the wagon. Mutual friends kept me up to date with the gossip, and told me that after I'd left Montreal Mo had moved into an apartment with Alejandro F. E******r-P, an oily and pretentious Mexican with a gorgeous scar (a knife-wound he said) down one of his cheeks, that there were coke fueled parties, and that Mo and Alejandro had opened a bar on St. Laurent called Hell's Kitchen. I think he mightn't have been on the wagon anymore.

An odd Mo story: several years later, Rob-Bob (my ex) and I were living in the live work condo and one of our neighbours was a studly guy named Chris who was involved with a studly gal named Andrea (like people in Calvin Klein Obsession ads). One day Chris and I were talking and I asked about Andrea, whom I hadn't seen in a few months. Chris told me that he and Andrea were taking a time out because Andrea had discovered that she still had feelings for an ex, a guy who had stalked her when she had been living in Toronto and he had been living in Montreal. I asked the guy's name, and Chris said, "Mo." I then asked what Mo did, and Chris said, "He runs a bar."

"Hell's Kitchen?" I asked, and Chris looked at me as though I had just sprouted another head. Sure enough, it was my friend Mo. And that was the last I heard of Mo, ever.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

If month  = december then goto socialobligations
    elseif month = january then goto jetscoolage
    elseif month = february then goto whistlermaybe 
    elseif month = march then goto yearendsurely
    elseif month = april then goto easter
    elseif month = may then goto drivingholiday
    elseif month = june then goto beach
    elseif month = july then goto folkmusicfestival
    elseif month = august then goto hornbyisland
    elseif month = september then goto backtoschool
    elseif month = october then goto turkeythengraveyard
    elseif month = november then goto cenotaphthenturkey
Else goto end

December is always looming, and January is always just beyond that. I work myself into a lather for December, then rinse off in January, then repeat ad infinitum. Living and working in time gives me repetitive strain injury.

Speaking of repetitive strains, I am always surprised at how I can listen to the same piece of music over and over, sometimes for hours or days or weeks or even months at a time. It's as though it becomes an integral part of my brain chemistry and I need it to survive with any sense of certainty that I exist (I hear, therefore I'm here), as much as I need air, food and water. Maybe more than I need sleep.

I am always surprised at how addicted I can be to music. Just after Glenn Gould passed away, I bought a vinyl copy of his 1982 recording of "The Goldberg Variations" (GG1982GV). I transfered it to tape and I played it a lot. When CD players came out, I bought one, and the same day I bought the GG1982GV CD, put it on and pressed play. When it ended I put it on repeat and didn't stop listening to it for two or so years. I listened to it while I slept, while I studied, while I was on the bus, but always privately; I really only ever listened to it by myself. I didn't even want to share it with my friends. It was a soul-o activity for me.

I met a few other people who were addicted to Glenn Gould and/or his recordings, the most notable being S*****, who was a part-time library assistant in the Wilson Listening Library. S***** confided to me that she had fantasies of losing her virginity to Glenn Gould (who had been dead for almost two years by that time). I admit that I was sorely obsessed and had a few fantasies of my own, but he functioned pretty much as a signpost and literary muse for me; there was nothing ever virginity busting. That said, there might have been had there been any virginity issues at the time.

I don't listen to GG1982GV so much anymore, though I still listen to it when I'm studying or doing something that requires me to concentrate. It helps me to get to the calm and receptive state of mind that I need to be in to do my best work. There is something constructive and firm about the structure of this piece of music. Listening to GG1982GV helps me to prepare good foundations for things that I want to remember.

Though GG1982GV is still pretty much defined as music I listen to only when I'm alone, I have reached a point at which I am able to share music that is important to me with others, and also to accept the music that others share with me. I shared The Dhol Foundation, the Brit bhangra troupe (my then musical addiction - 1.3 years), with Brian, and he shared a bunch of bands, including Blank & Jones, the German trance duo, with me. I liked Blank & Jones so much that I got their Singles disc, and I play it again and again and again and again and again...

When I listen to them, my mind goes blank (in a good way), and when I don't listen to them, I jones (also in a good way). I think this may be a genetic trait, because my mother does a similar thing with films: she finds one she likes and watches it repeatedly. I believe that she watched Home Alone 3 so often that she wore her copy out, and likewise for her copy of the version of Cinderella with Brandy in it. I think she has now graduated to wearing out the first Star Wars trilogy.

My mother's mother had a gambling addiction, she told me once that she used to bet on the horses until the day she lost $600, which was, back then, a big chunk of money. That day she quit laying bets, cold turkey.

I wonder how long my Blank & Jones addiction will last. I'm not likely to lose any money on it, so I may never quit. Anyone willing to lay a bet?

Pandora's Picks Today

Sweet Transvestite

Safety Dance

Theme from Flashdance (What a Feeling!)

I'm Gonna Get You In My Tent

Turquoise

Mind of the Wonderful

Your Cheatin' Heart

Invisible Sun

Solsbury Hill

I watched Matrix Revolutions, which is not as bad a film as expected. I found a copy of it on E-Bay, sealed in box, located in Etobicoke, $1.99 plus $4.99 shipping. Almost as cheap as a rental, though it took about a week to arrive.

The Matrix films really look beautiful, and, I am pretty certain, have spawned a version of spirituality in the same way that the Star Wars films have spawned their version of spirituality ("use the fork, Luke"). I don't think I'm a believer, true or not, but I want to see the original Matrix again. I want to see them all again.

See what can happen when you open the box...

On Friday, On Saturday, On Sunday

Friday I took my mother to buy her new walker. She bought one called the Evolution Sprite (for the tiny amongst us). She is at least 2 inches shorter than I am and I am not very tall.

Yesterday, influenced by the dance/trance music I've been listening to, I fished out the Monsoon cd to hear the ever-so-lovely voice of Sheila Chandra. It's hard to believe that the song "Ever So Lonely" was released in the 80s. How did that happen?

My great friend Rob H is thinking of taking some time off in July, during which he and his friend Mike and Mike's boyfriend may stay in the Okanagan at Sandy Beach. I have been invited to join them, and depending on work and school, I may. A week on the beach in the Okanagan sounds pretty good to me in these gloomy, stormy times we're having right now.

The idea of taking another short (7 day) Alaskan cruise has also come up, and we (Rob and I) may do that in addition to spending a week in the Okanagan.  It all depends on being able to book time off work.

It is tiresome to have to boil water for one or two minutes, though I used to boil it for even longer. I know people who work in the Enhanced Water Lab (do testing for microorganisms in water from regional districts), and one day, while I was visiting, Lorraine was looking at Vancouver City water and found some giardia cysts. She showed them to me, and for a while afterwards I boiled all the water for ten minutes before drinking or even filtering, but it's different if you choose to do it.

To boil or not to boil...that is the question...

The Neatette is here, and here is a picture. I'm going to go give it a vacuum and fill it up.

Later: I've gathered some of the stray stuff and put it into the Neatette, and the difference in the amount of clutter is astonishing. I recommend getting storage furniture.

The Neatette is definitely neato, and aptly named.

The white surface in the pic to the right is an porcelain coated work surface, so I now have a counter of sorts. It's not in perfect shape, but it's pretty good. The increased workability of the space is another astonishment. I'm astonished by the improvement to my life.

Later yet: I was able to cook an actual meal downstairs: rice in the rice cooker and turkey vegetable soup in the griddle-based crock pot (super fast) that I bought for my grandmother pre 1984. It was given back to me when my grandmother died in 1992, and I haven't really used it. I tried to give it away but wasn't able to and now I'm glad to have it. I'll probably be able to use the electric frying pan and the griddler as well. I may not have a full kitchen, but I have almost everything I'll need to cook whatever I want. What won't I be able to cook down here? Roast bird and beast.

The Neatette is the love of the day. How could you not love something with a name like Neatette?

Later still: Taking advantage of a window of sun-not-rain, I dried the flanges on the skylights and attempted to seal them up using Vulkem 116, a urethane-based caulking compound, as recommended by Greg, my roofing guy. Vulkem 116 is vile stuff, smelly and sticky, but it doesn't necessarily stick to the stuff you want it to stick to. It's also very thick and I had to use pretty much all of my (non-existent) hand strength to pull the trigger on the caulking gun to get the stuff from the tube to the tip. It's not at all like the other caulking compounds I've used in the past. The hassles and mess of using silicon caulking are nothing in comparison to the hassles and mess of using this stuff.

I did a messy job, but I have hope that I've been able to seal the skylights, and that the drips will stop.  I don't want to live in a house that leaks, so I hope. Please feel free to hope with me.

Back to Shriekback

No guts, no blood, no friends at all...

A friend burned a disc of music I'd never heard before (all good), and some of it reminded me of Shriekback, the Willfully dark musick which I used to listen to in the 80s. I had almost forgotten about Shriekback, but I did a web search and had a reunion.

Listening to Shriekback was a..well, I'd forgotten how intense and melodramatic, how sexy, how overwrought, their musick could be, so it was a wonder. It was a bit like swimming through a dream, dark and bubbly, syrup, or something else thick, thicker than water, at body temperature. It was like being a red blood cell, swimming in the bloodstream - with the bassline, the beat of the heart, moving you around - with the space between songs, like lungs, where you go to replenish your oxygen. You go up for air and you don't know that you've been oxygen deprived, then you carry on through the bloodstream again.

...oh desire, the ashes and the fire turning this light inside and the light from you...

I checked Shriekback out on Amazon and found Big Night Music, an audio CD, selling for $178 and Go Bang!, another audio CD, selling for $38. I didn't have Big Night Music, but I'm pretty sure I used to have Go Bang! because I have a vague memory of buying it for a small amount of money in a second hand store in Montreal, and I vaguely remember listening to "Get Down Tonight" more than once. I wonder if I still have it. Probably sold it at one of the moving sales or maybe left it when I moved away from Rob/Bob (my ex).

Anyway, the baseline is this: if you have any Shriekback discs, don't give them away.

Barry Andrews, the Shriekback front man - who was at the campus radio station one day when I was there, dressed in a big wool cape and a flat brimmed felt hat, very dashing and melodramatic - must be pleased that Big Night Music and Go Bang! have become such valuable items, considering how unvaluable they have been.

Though it does appear that Shriekback, like many other 80s and early 90s bands, has a new disc out. Shriekback is making a comeback.

It's Musick. It's Magick. Everything that rises must converge...

Bach on a Friday Evening

My flatmate Barbara and I went to an excellent concert of Bach played by the Pacific Baroque Orchestra at the St James Anglican Church at Cordova & Gore. Considering the neighbourhood that church is in, the crowd was surprisingly middle class CBC radio listening types.

THe musc was splendid. Life would be less enjoyable without Bach.

During the opening talk I sneezed. The fellow who was talking, without a beat, looked at me and said, "Bless you." I guess that's what happens when you sneeze in God's house.

Tania was there with her daughter Serena, son Matthew and her friend Bing. At the end of the concert she asked if I needed a ride home. I live three short blocks away from this church, and I was with somebody who lives in the same house and with whom I would walk. I did not accept the ride.

Tania lives in the Mau Dan co-op on the other side of Pender from here, less than a block away. I am amazed that she would drive to something that close.

As I get to know Tania, I see how fearful she is of her neighbourhood. How can she stand to live here if her fear is so overwhelming?

I don't know.