Kind of Bloop is an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’ most successful album. It was curated by Andy Baio who’s been blogging and posting links forevers at waxy.org, and is a cofounder of kickstarter. Baio did everything he could think of to make this a legitimate and lawful release. With the help of kickstarter, he raised the needed funds to pay the licensing fees for all tracks on said album. It turned out to be an awesome stroke of cross promotion; being covered by Time Magazine among others.

Kind of Bloop was released nearly a year ago. I listened to it a couple times, it’s fun; Shnabubula’s “All Blues” is all over the map. I do wish, however, that all the classic jazz lovers who abhor this conceptual tribute would give it a solid listen. I understand some folks can only tolerate acoustic music, but I wish they could also appreciate the skill, effort, and detail that make these ‘computerized’ renditions so organic, human, and unique. It’s all jazz — even when Hannibal, of the A*Team, is forming a plan.

So here’s the crap — the cover of the album has it’s own copyright holder, photographer Jay Maisel. He never gave consent and claims he never would have if asked. Even though Kind of Bloop’s cover is an 8bit translation, it apparently failed to diverge enough from the original. Maisel, with money and lawyers, managed to pin Baio for a mere $32,500. Maisel is an artisanal juggernaut, people pay him $5k for weekend workshops. Jay Maisel is the man.

Campbell’s Soup never sued Andy Warhol for making their cans look like vomit. I’m kind of worried about Campbell’s masculinity.

I’d like to make an analogy using a Mr. Show skit from the perspective of the legal world. The guy with the bloody ear is a younger generation of artist who flirts with mashups and chipmusic covers. The donut clerk is the court. The seated acquaintance is the elder established artist, the hipster from the 50′s bronze age of jazz.

Fair Use has always sounded like a trap to me. Yeah, you’re in the clear as long as you make no money. But what if you had something that went mad viral, containing copyrighted material, and it launches your artistic career? Can that copyright holder, with enough lawyer power, find a way to garnish your new professional wages? In most lawsuits, the court sides with the established juggernaut mother.

Please read Andy Baio’s account on the situation.

I tried to read the pamphlet but there was all this math all over the place!  Isn’t numerology the work of the devil?  For those who mysteriously disappear today, they are heaven bound, the rest of us are left enjoying an every day heaven on Earth.  Tis really said, tis it is.

But a 33rd burfday on teh rupture isn’t enough.  Do you know how many 33rd burfdays there are today?  A lot.  Let’s backtrack a few weeks in the Metro Times –

Yeah, Best of Detroit vicariously hosted by pictures of the Detroit Roller Derby gals.  Betty Biretta (on the far right) is an awesome lady; she’ll knock you out with a fist of over easy half beef and another with double bacon!  So will Lisa!  Lookout!!

I humbly decline that the beard reference is entirely my fault.  There are, and have been, many beards working the door down there.  Still though, many coworkers assure me (both sacrastically and not) it’s all my fault.  On another note, the alleyway lights have been replaced; it’s not dark anymore.  :(

Many thanks to so many folks who have made this a blessed day already!  And to everyone who thinks they are flying away to Heaven’s Gate this evening, can I have your money?  I don’t really need anymore stuff.  ;D

2010 been aight.

• an attention getter
• state your purpose
• expand your idea
• break it down
• keep them interested
• revelation
• end with a ‘thanx’
• Q + A

This, indubitably, is in abstract reference to the music itself which, thus, includes all countenance and hither to any such ambiguous proclamations such that antithesis rides again in a squandary of adhesive codas.  Pack your bags, it’s time for a vacation.  And nary the very inquiry that brought us here in the first place.  :D/

I don’t know whats more amazing : the 30 year old VIC-20 on television or a newscaster that can program his sign-off on a Commodore 64!

Syd Bolton’s sentimental decision for this particular machine, as it was his first machine, caught me up in my own romances.  It was my first machine too.  Tweeting had already been done on the Commdore 64, and the VIC offers a new height of challenge with it’s limited 3.5kb RAM for loading/writing software.  Bolton even choose a datasette peripheral device for storing the tweeting program.  But how does it really work?

The VIC-20 is connected to a modern PC via it’s RS-232 interface.  With this port and protocol, a Commodore computer is capable of communicating with various hardware including hobbyist electronics.  The modern PC software is titled tweetVer and is supposed to be public soon and supporting multiple 8bit platforms.  TweetVer, I am guessing, is the hub between 8bit and interwebs, doing the actual posting.  This is where some controversy begins, the VIC-20 vicariously attached to the web rather than directly.

The application of the experiment is a complete novelty, but the experiment itself is an awesome example of geek gadgetry and exploration.  At first glance,  I was hoping the VIC-20 negotiated an ISP and was directly utilizing the Twitter API.  From what I gathered through some comments, this method is actually possible, though you’d have to find a person willing to waste hours upon hours developing a complete novelty.

Some net trolls have garnered this epic event as nothing more than a publicity stunt.  It doesn’t help matters when a self-proclaimed VIC-20 lover poops out a generic press release for their first post on a community forum. But taking a cynical approach against a non-profit computer museum falls daft. The ends, exposing the masses to an antique machine stull usabel today, justifies the means.

All in all, afterall,  it is a nifty idea.