Via WaPo: The Library of Congress, as part of their amazing American Memory site, has launched “Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories.”
former slaves tell their stories
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Author Archives: ghw
things that make you go deaf
Friggin’ fire alarm. Again. At least this time it was turned off sooner. It could be half as loud and it would still fulfill its purpose.
You know what else was loud, back in the day? H¸sker D¸.
I remember watching the Joan Rivers Show when H¸sker D¸ was on. They were promoting their just-released double album Warehouse: Songs & Stories.
Joan said something like, “I’ve been doing my homework. And I know that you guys don’t write the same angry songs you used to.” Bob Mould responded, “Yeah, well, we’re not seventeen anymore.”
All this by way of telling you that Bob Mould has a blog, now. (Thanks, Geoffrey.)
bloggers should absolutely, positively not do this
I was poking around the paratexts of someone’s blog when I clicked on their Amazon.com wishlist and immediately noticed that this person has musical tastes similar to mine. I thought, “Hmm. Wouldn’t it be a bad idea for bloggers to publicize their Amazon.com wishlists and list a few CDs they’d like to have, hoping that some reader might contact them and offer to burn them a copy of one of those CDs? Perhaps it would also be a bad idea if that reader were to send the blogger a link to their Amazon.com wishlist to see if the blogger would offer to burn a copy of one of those CDs.”
So whatever you do, do not look at my Amazon.com wishlist to see which CDs I would like to have. And do not email me at ghw[at]wordherders[dot]net to offer to burn me a copy of one of those CDs that you might own in exchange for my burning you a copy of one of my CDs that you might like.
It would just be wrong.
Update: So where did all these musicians come from? They’ve always been there, but because of the way the music industry works, most of us don’t get to hear them. I like popular music well enough, but I also try to find music that’s out of the mainstream. I get recommendations (and gifts) from friends, listen to non-commercial radio stations via the Internet, check out tracks from Epitonic, read and check out tracks from
Pitchforkmedia, look up information on Allmusic, which has a nice “similar artists” function. You can also learn a lot by reading blogs, ya know. Here, let me point you towards this Allmusic entry on a genre of music known as post-rock.
batten down the hatches!
Liz Lawley reports getting hammered with comment spam on her blog tonight. If you’re running your blog on MT, you need to have MT Blacklist. It’s easy to install, and it works like a charm. I’ve just updated the Wordherders’ blacklist, which I’ll link to here.
is apple all it’s cracked up to be?
How hard should it be to figure out how to transfer MP3s from your Apple Powerbook to your non-iPod MP3 player? Apple has a reputation for intuitive user interfaces, and yet I cannot for the life of me determine how to get the songs off of the hard drive onto this Rio Cali. The computer recognizes the player, and it’s listed in the “Source List” in iTunes. And yet… how do you get this stuff over here onto that thing over there?
Does anyone know?
Update: This does not help. The songs will not drag and drop.