I must extend exceedingly warm thanks and praise to the good folks of The Birthday Party in Manchester, who did an splendid job in putting on one of the most excellent parties I’ve had the pleasure to play at in some time this Saturday.

From the delight of seeing Tony Wilson scowling over a pair of CD decks (apparently for the first time ever!) whilst delivering a set that ranged from Patti Smith and “Venus In Furs” to some decidely evil sounding electro tinged hip-hop, to the gallic-erotic delights of The Lovers and the hardest working Samba/Funk crowd-surprise you’ll ever see in your life (alright, Johnny!), I spent the hours before my own bout of laptop scowling constantly scooping my jaw off the ground at the wide ranging intensity of it all, lapped up by a splendid, more than up-for it sold-out crowd.

Oh, and they seemed to like my contribution a bit too. Which was nice.

Been quietish for the last couple, for which I must apologise – there’s been an influx of new tech chez Klep, and as most of you will know, new tech means soldering, scowling, googling, scowling some more, regediting, rebooting, rtfm-ing and so on. Still, about 75% of things are working as intended, and other things are in process, which is a pretty good strike rate for now.

So after a couple of weeks of the above, it made me smile to see that we’ve been getting a raft of hits from this article on the Modgods site.

Podshanking? Well, we’re honoured to be the trigger to inspire a new hack even if it looks more like good old tape-to-tape to me. Still, quotes like this:

“I’m sick to death of our devices fighting us. I bought this iPod to carry music, not enforce an Apple-branded morality to replace my own internal compass. We all know how our devices should work, but in this tumultuous age we do not yet have casual, home manufacturing and so Sony and Apple and TiVo will continue to break our hearts while we must lick their boots.”

…always warm my heart, are the reason why I won’t buy, say, an iPod. I adore the concept of the Airport Express, but I don’t want to be restricted to iTunes – hell, forget other mp3 players, I might even want to use it to stream music that I’m actually working on, from Ableton or Acid or whatever to another room, but no can do. (And yes, before you mail in, There are other options… I know about things like the Squeezebox – I’m waiting on the reviews of the v2 of that before I decide).

The technology is there, it’s in the little box you’ve bought, which is more than capable of delivering, but you can’t use it – they broke it’s legs on the journey between the design board and the factory.

Like I said above, new tech always means new issues, and invariably it means finding out how to make what you’ve bought do the bulk of the things you really bought them to try to do – i.e. Getting online and finding the hacks. Just looking around here… Router? hacked firmware for better quality wireless. Soundcard? discontinued driver so running a hacked one. DVD player? Hacked to play VCDs and SVCDs etc… etc…

It’s one thing hacking to get something to work in a way it was never supposed to do in the first place, but with a whole generation of people being forced to hack to remove ridiculously restricting shackles or, in most cases, to get something to do what it was supposed to do in the first place, but can’t because of a format or location issue, it really makes you wonder where things are heading…

So where’s the communication? Ed Costello, once he’s given us a namecheck (grazi!), points to a well-timed article in the Economist discussing “The rise of the creative consumer”.

It’s as typical an article as you would expect, half futuristic optimism, half “Hey, guys, look, you can get your users to do the R&D and all the re-coding for nothing”, but nowhere does it actually come clean and say the obvious – that a fair and growing proportion of this hack and mod work is being done out of bare necessity. I doubt the future of such innovation will be as harmonious as the Economist imagines it, given the growing millions of examples that are staring us in the face…

Interesting piece from Andrew O’Hagen in the telegraph.

“Sometimes winning is just another name for conforming to a glaring expectation. Losing is a virtue too little regarded as a motor of artistic invention.”

A fine point, at least in music, as in one respect, generations of country balladeers, blueswailers and torch singers will testify. In another respect, see the multitude of bands who “used to be known as” – the latest English example being the Kaiser Chiefs, who had their previous (“Parva”) incarnation’s hopes cruelly flushed down the pan when their label went kaput just after they’d recorded their debut album. However, they’ve managed to turn their depressions and furies around and are now having the last laugh. “I Predict A Riot”, indeed.

“How un-American, I know, but there’s something to be said… for looking in the eye of a rival and knowing you are lost. Art can begin there too. “No matter,” wrote Samuel Beckett. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Amen to that.

It’s always good when a skim of blogs and newspaper sites reveal a common topic, and today has been a bumper harvest, so here’s a few links to some rather interesting points of view:

First up there’s this article in the Guardian by composer John Woolrich about ignoring musical categories. One sentence sticks out beautifully:

“Many people are hungry for anything that sounds a bit different, uses sound in a new way and sets itself apart from the naked consumerism of commercial pop.”

Common sense to some, maybe, but it’s always good to see it written about with such enthusiasm, especially from one who probably has very little interest in the week-to-week changes of fashion and taste that usually blight newspaper music journalism.

Onto the permanently outspoken Victor Stone at Virtual Turntable, who, not content with having just completed an excellent five part series debunking many myths and giving many splendid pointers about music composition, now picks up the ongoing discussion about the pros and cons of signing the “big record deal”, initially in response to an article on Brad Sucks, which itself was a comment on an Ask Metafilter thread, and then carries it back to his own site, the better to state his case.

(If you’re digging through this and are interested, or have never read them, don’t fail to check out Steve Albini’s “The Problem With Music” and both of Courtney Love’s speeches (one, two) that are referenced within the above links – although now both a few years old, these articles eloquently target the perpetual problems that still exist in the ol’ Music Biz – Eye-peeling reading for the uninitiated, indeed).

And finally move on to the February 3rd entry in David Byrne’s always interesting diary (there’s no date direct link – move to a proper blog format, David, please ;), wherein he ruminates about the current stateside success of The Arcade Fire, wonders how they’ll do in their soon-come major label ping-pong game, and ends up relating a discussion with his young daughter about the idea behind “intelllectual property”.

Phew. For one day’s skimming, that’s a mighty potent, and highly inspiring bunch of opinions and attitudes.

No further comment from me needed, I think.

(aka “Get your hands offa my ass”)

This cracks me up. I expect a mass riot any day now Stateside as East and West coasts start battling over the phrase “All the ladies in the house go…”

PS Thanks to all for feedback on the XFM Show. We’ve been slack on getting the new hosting sorted, but as people seem to be wanting it, I might just stick the whole thing up as a torrent for now anyway – watch this space.

(addendum)

Now, bizarrely, (maybe, maybe not) I have a Google DeskBar, which I love (much more than the clunky toolbar), but having that handy little slot in your system tray means that I’ve developed a major tendency to cut and paste phrases into it just to see what pops up.

(Yeah, I know, you’re thinking, “So he hasn’t sorted out their hosting, but he’ll sit there all night sticking random phrases into Google? Priorities, my man, priorities…”)

Anyway, was impressed to find that sticking “Whose ass is it anyway?” into my googleslot brings up this delightfully wordy article from four years back, wherein a rather deluded advertising guy bemoans the downhill spiral of quality in his industry, in a world where:

“popular culture has become a vague miasma of insincerity constructed from a sarcastic vibe”

Are you going to tell him, or shall I?

…but by golly, it feels like an old year right now, doesn’t it?

First up, a belated happy new year to you all, and as we said on the site, thanks to all who came and frugged 2005 into existance at the All Time Top 100 Blow out – a damn fine party to be sure…

Secondly, I’ll extend the new year’s honours that we gave to our mailing list (along with a little xmas present – see what you’re missing out on?), and give a loud and hearty thanks to everyone that has listened to, talked about, blogged about, emailed comments about, given the finger to Disney on behalf of, hosted, mirrored, written about etc… anything that we’ve done this past year.

(And double thanks to anyone who stuck us in their end-of-year charts – we’re honoured)

We could blather on about it and single people out for praise, but we want to keep this short. You know who you are, anyway, and it’s all really really appreciated, maaaan.

Next up, the reason for our recent quietness is that we’ve been a little hive of industry, and have been locked away polishing off 60 minutes of new stuff for an exclusive radio mix for James Hyman’s “The Rinse” show on XFM here in swinging Londonengland..

The show will air on Sunday 23rd January at 1am GMT – You can listen on their website, so if you fancy a spot of new New Year sounds direct from Kleptonia, please tune in – we’d love to have you along…

(Also following our mix at 2am is an hour mix set from the legendary Jazzy Jeff – an honour to be warming up for the man, to be sure)

That’s about it for now, I think…

Now it might be old web hat to some of you, but discovering the recent growth in word-of-mouth marketing agencies is a little trippy to me.

(There was apparently an article about this in last Sunday’s New York Times, but I can’t find it online – if anyone knows where it is, please leave a link in the comments. Ta.)

For the uninitiated, have a look at Bzzagent, which pretty much sums up the deal. Okay, loads of people have set up street teams and stuff like that, ways to help bands and suchlike get some (usually much needed) free ground support, but the idea that people are now setting up agencies where you sign up and when something they think you might like comes along they give it to you in return for you going round and showing your friends how cool it is is setting a pretty dangerous precident, don’tcha think?

Now, I’m not a fan of guerilla advertising in any form whatsoever (wow, Eric, you surprise us). I’m firmly in the Bill Hicks camp on that one. (“Anyone here who works in advertising? Go home and shoot yourself. No really, I mean that. Go home and do it.”)

So, Bzzagent’s site states “You only join campaigns for products you like”, and Womma’s site rails against people already trying to discredit their system online by pointing out that “We have long maintained that ‘seeding’ has a corrosive effect on the integrity of the web…”, but this all leaves a hella bad taste in the mouth. Especially coming from marketing companies (like, duh, it’s their job to convince you, maan). There are already enough people posting fake reviews, dummy blogs etc… without stuff like this to contend with. And to make matters worse, Bzzagent seem to be directing themselves at a reasonably huge and rather vulnerable group of people: people who want to be way cool, but somehow, because of whatever insecurity they suffer from, don’t think that they are.

As their Bzzagent of the month puts it on the front page of the site:

“I have no idea at times what is current or new. But with Bzz I have an edge almost. I can talk to my friends about some new cool things that I would not usually even venture out and even look at.”

(It’s the “almost” that gets me there)

Now, stuff like this has been going on for years behind the scenes – backhanders, payola, freebies, goodie bags, call it what you want – but to bring stuff like this out in the open I think will have serious consequences for many different kinds of community, not just online. How can you trust anyone at all? If someone tells me about some new music, even if it’s good, I want to believe that they’ve passed it on to me because they feel it, and they want to share it, not because once they’ve written up my reaction to it and passed it back to their agency (without my permission, hemhem), they’ll earn brownie points and gift vouchers.

As this article in the Concorde Monitor demonstrates, The Monitor received several reviews of books and printed them, only to later find out they’d been Bzzed. Even though the review author claims he genuinely liked the books, The Monitor knows they cannot print advertiser-backed content without stating where it comes from and who’s funding it. And that’s just one person who copped to it. What about all the others who haven’t?

“Word-of-mouth is the most credible and trusted form of advertising, especially in the internet age,” say Womma. Yeah, seems like a bit of fun, a way of getting freebies, maybe earning a little cash, getting to think you’re “cool” and still thinking you retain your integrity.

But if this is where it starts, where the hell is it going to end up? David Byrne (December 6 post) makes some typically elegant connections in his online diary that make for interesting reading, and shows that what was once a nightmarish future-scenario is edging nearer and nearer to reality.

How long before less scrupulous agencies spring-up? Or less scrupulous agents? How long before “Womma-free” banner ads start appearing in people’s blogs?

Considering pretty much everyone that has ever visited this site or downloaded any of our tracks has ended up doing it because of word-of mouth, like I said, it leaves a bad taste.

But, hey, when I have a bad taste in my mouth, I always reach for my Breathezee minty gel caps to keep my breath minty fresh. Why don’t you try some? I have some right here in my pocket. Go on… have one.

I’m sure you’ll like them.

Haven’t posted for a couple of weeks, but that doesn’t mean that the world has stopped, just nothing to add much to what’s being said elsewhere…

But seeing that Apple have decided to stomp on the sale of a “customised” iPod… well, what the hell can you say here… This is a regular iPod (okay, a limited edition U2 one), that someone has uploaded a few albums by another band, put a couple of stickers on the pod and the box, and then stuck up on Ebay.

(It doesn’t even include the “U2” single that caused Negativland such grief first time round)

But Apple say “No!” – we think this violates our intellectual property rights (where’s the proof – oh, no-one wants to take Apple to court? Surprise, surprise…). So Apple whinge to Ebay and they pull the auction with a day to go.

So what about things like this? Does this not violate these IP rights that are so important even more? (Look what they’ve done to that thing! And they’ve ripped-off your branding too. C’mon Apple – get those guys!!!)

Or, more importantly, is the endorsement deal that U2 have struck with Apple so damn important that no-one is allowed to take the piss out of it?

(and let’s face it, their new album is one of the most full-on ad campaigns I’ve seen any band rage for years – as LNR says, they really ARE still “The Hype”)

If this is indicitive of Apple’s attitude as they plunge head first into the music industry (“one law for us, one law for you”), there’s going to be some seriously choppy waters ahead, to say the least…

..and we thank you.

The last couple of days has seen a flurry of comment and debate sparked by yesterday’s incident. To the many of you who blogged, posted comments, emailed cunning methods of protest, debated the situation and above all, offered mirrors and posted links up, we doff our caps and thank you for your support.

It is very, very, very, much appreciated.

As people have been asking – no, we haven’t had any mail from Disney. But we’re approaching our mailbox with trepidation, to say the least.

No… not that one, although if you haven’t seen it yet, go check out the Grey Video… an excellent piece of work, made by as yet unknown hands.

The dangerous mouse in this case, sadly, is Disney, who, as owners of Hollywood Records, are the controllers of Queen’s catalogue in the USA. Disney have issued Waxy.org with a cease-and-desist order, due to their mirroring of our “Hip-Hopera”. They have been asked to remove all links to the 23 tracks by the 23rd November.

However, as Boing Boing and Waxy have both already pointed out, Waxy aren’t actually hosting the files themselves, just linking to them, which isn’t the same thing at all.

Naturally, this is unfortunate, if not wholly unexpected, news.