Happy Birthday, Compact Disc!

Happy Birthday, Compact Disc. You are now 25 years old, which translated to tech-years and divided by dog-years, means you're about 150.

It's ok, it's been a great ride. I pronounced you dead almost ten years ago, but somehow the world kept creating billions of your cousins and selling them to anyone that would buy.

You were barely 15 years old when medium range digital recording systems bulged beyond your capacity to carry data. Lately, your little (well, bigger in some senses) brother, the DVD, has become the de-facto shiny medium for digital storage. But even your brother's stress is showing - we seem to enjoy movies and music more when they're not attached to shiny things. We like our media on tiny thumbdrives, which now easily carry as much data as your DVD brethren.

Your story is a good one, and I think that's all you can really ask for in this life: A good story to be told about you when you're gone. And make no mistake, Compact Disc - you're good as gone.

Happy Birthday, and thank you for the memories.

Photo by dnldwk.

The Tony Windle Project - Altosyndrum

A set of photos from Tony Windle's show in Placerville a couple of weeks ago. Tony is joined by Scott Reams and percussionist Mambo Hernandez.

Tommy Dorsey's "Brazil" in film and TV

NY Magazine has an excellent analysis of various film usages of the main theme of Tommy Dorsey's "Brazil." The most widely known version is most likely Michael Kamen's adaptation used in Terry Gilliam's film of the same name.

IMHO, music producers in general (and especially film composers) should be aware of Kamen and his body of work. "Brazil" is certainly a film that will be referenced often in conversations between directors and composers.

via The Big Picture.

Josh Woodward's got a new CD

Among my emails today was a note from Josh Woodward (his music is behind my DIY "Bubba Bowls" video) that he's released another CD. What caught my attention is his "name your own price" philosophy of selling shiny discs. This may or may not backfire, but it will give him VERY high-quality consumer feedback, and probably gain a few mentions in the blogosphere. Additionally, if you're a film or media producer of some kind and you're in the market for *excellent*, CreativeCommons-licensed American folk music, Josh is your man.

Fionn Regan - Be good or be gone

Fionn Regan's video for his single "Be Good or Be Gone" is worth a few minutes of your time. For some reason, Universal has disabled embedding, so I can't show it to you here.