After a long wait of about a year and a half, signed up and obligated to stick with a new upstart company promising to provide free DSL service as soon as the technical ability reached my particular region of this proud land o’ mine, I finally got my DSL up and operating. At last I had evolved to the next level of high speed information at my fingertips, the future was mine, I’d left the swamp walking on my hind legs, I would never accidentally tell the deaf neighbor boy that I baked his dog for him. Things were looking up for me in the cyber-world with this newly added turbo feature, as speed is very important to me. But approximately 8 or 9 hrs after I got it going, the new upstart company sent word explaining that they had gone bankrupt! The progress was yanked away from me immediately. Suddenly my opposable thumbs were gone, I was back to that archaic and buggy 56K modem, lost connections, missed phone calls and download times of up to an hour for just one song on Napster.
Having had but a taste of DSL service I knew I just had to have it, even if it wasn’t free so I chose a more solid big brother-ish company and waited impatiently for the arrival of a modem and adapters and instructions and all that stuff, which came, but not without a myriad of complicated problems rendering certain functions of my computer useless or obsolete or improperly configured or just plain too fucked up to be understood by a parade of friends trying to help, all ready to apply their unique version of expertise to the predicament in spite of my raging bitch demeanor and often to no avail. Once again in the wake of making a technological improvement on my computer, it turned into the same old two steps forward six steps back situation that makes me want to throw the whole fucking thing out the window, which I nearly did. Finally it happened, the right lights blinked in unison, the proper update kicked in, the enabler enabled but in a good way, and I had DSL running properly. I believe that was the very day that the court ordered Napster to stop distributing music they didn’t own rights to, wouldn’t you know.
I’m not exactly sure what this ultimately means for Napster because the entire legal odyssey sparked largely by Metallica member Lars Ulrich has been such a long drawn out battle with the upper-hand being volleyed back and forth between the two opposing factions, but the most recent rulings definitely make the future of Napster look pretty bleak. Taking this into consideration, my DSL service and I paid the renowned music-trading program a visit. I figured it would be like vultures picking over the bones of a battlefield, having heard on the news that Napster was being forced to whittle down their shared files by thousands daily but it wasn’t exactly like that at all.
Sure, running a search on major artists like Stevie Wonder, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Led Zeppelin, The Supremes, Marilyn Manson or Pearl Jam now produces no shared files, but if you pick something a bit more obscure like Placebo, Make-up, The Euroboys, Kyuss, Stereo Total, Los Amigos Invisibles, The Bellrays and other more Indie type bands or even local acts like Zen Guerrilla or Fabulous Disaster, you can still find tons of things, even rare covers, live cuts and other oddities you didn’t even know existed. This works as well for a lot of older rock music of a more obscure nature like the MC5, The Dictators, The Sonics, etc. It all depends on what other people are signed on and sharing from their personal collections and how much of the material has been officially made unavailable for sharing in this manner. Now that I have DSL I’m downloading tons of stuff because it takes so very little time, and there are lots of fun ways to locate great material, we just don’t know for how much longer.
One of my latest methods for locating great music online is run a search for Kiki and Herb, the fabulously famous cabaret duo from San Francisco who have been ruling New York for a few years now with their unequalled theatrical/musical brilliance. Last year they released a Christmas Album, “Do You Hear What We Hear,” and I thought if anyone on Napster is sharing files by Kiki and Herb well then they’ve got to have excellent taste so I see who has them in their shared files then I peruse their entire collections and find the most fabulous and eclectic and informed collections I’ve ever encountered on my searches. And these libraries are growing fast, likely because they fear the impending demise or regulation of Napster as well. Another very fun way to search for songs is to just put one word in the title part of the search box and see what songs it comes up with. I’ve mentioned this before, it’s fun to try words like “crack” or “suck” or “need” or “dick” and see how many titles come up with that word in them. It can make for a lovely thematic medley for some cocktail party in your future, perhaps a farewell to Napster party because I just don’t know how much longer we’ll have the Napster that America made the fastest growing most downloaded music file-sharing program ever. It’s my guess that we’ll have a fair amount of time remaining to continue finding great music for free, but you better get on it.
Speaking of Kiki and Herb, they have a website now that you can visit at http://www.kikiandherb.com. Here you will find bios, show schedules, upcoming events, past awards, photos, where to purchase their fantastic album, and lots more fun Kiki and Herb related links. Among them is one that is really fantastic that you must visit. There’s a big banner that will take you to Spin.com for the streaming video feature Kiki and Herb present the 2nd Annual Anti-Grammys. Brought to you live from the Fez in New York, Kiki and Herb reel through a sizable list of odd award categories in response to the historically lame Grammys. The streaming video capabilities of my computer are much better now that I have DSL, so the nine short segments run smoothly and are totally brilliant. Kiki is in rare form as she adds her own thoughts, opinions and personal experience to each award and nominee announced, revealing her friendship with Eminem’s mother Debbie Mathers, Christina Aguilera’s true age, and her bold feelings about the criminal charges brought against a number of todays biggest music stars. This is Kiki at her stream of consciousness, ad-libbing and outrageous best, adequately capturing that inimitable between song banter that slays me every time. This was such a great idea for Spin.com to showcase this talented duo, New York’s nightlife phenomenon, so that a broader range of people can see a bit of one of the greatest acts on earth. Check out the site, it’s hysterically funny.
I got an e-mail from Justin Bond the other day and like any true star, He is busy, busy, busy. He was heading to L.A. to be in Rufus Wainwright’s new video, a pastiche on Andy Warhol’s Heatin which he’ll play the Sylvia Miles role. Then Kiki and Herb will be hosting the4th anniversary Mr. Lady Records showcase in North Carolina with Le Tigre and The Butchies. Soon after that Kiki and Herb will open their extended engagement summer show in New York entitled Stop Drop and Roll at The Fez I believe. In the meantime, Justin will be teaching a course at NYU in Performance Composition and towards the end of August they will be appearing at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Michelle tea told me the other day that she was reading an interview in New York Magazine with Monica Lewinsky and the interviewer asked her what she did for fun, who she hangs out with, who are her friends, and Ms. Lewinsky said, “Justin Bond.”
As a final note I’d like to express my deep sadness over the untimely death of Joey Ramone. The Ramones as a band remained together and consistent and true to their seminal punk rock glue-sniffing retardo rocker form for over 25 years and I remember a late night about 20 years ago at a friends house in Eugene, Oregon we listened to the song “I Just Wanna Have Something To Do Tonight,” turned up full blast and jumping around the room and I have to say that at that particular moment in time Rock and Roll had never felt better. I’ll always feel a little bit like that every time I hear that song. Long Live the Ramones.